music

If Taylor Swift is bigger than Beatlemania, then it’s pretty wild to think how much cultural potential is stored in a single person. What if Taylor Swift took psychedelics and reached a new level of artistry, experimentation, and philosophy?

On practicing vocals:

• Can you consistently match pitches?

• Can you consistently stay in key?

• Can you identify the root note of any song?

Music done right captures a resonance between math and language.

Harmony/rhythm is basically a space/time language that is mathematical (an octave is a unit of space, a measure is a unit of time, and it’s all about how you carve and layer within those units). Lyrics are obviously the linguistic half of it. In the most basic songs, a nice poem is

7/8 beat:
K- x- S- x- K- K- SS
KK SS KK Sx -x Kx Sx

There’s a neat illusion where it actually reads as 4 + 4 + 4 + 2 because of the snare spacing (it’s always on the 3rd of a 4/4).

Here’s that same beat written out as 4+4+4+2:
K- x- (3) S- x-
K- K- (3) SS KK
SS KK (3) S -
K- S- (now 3 is missing and it loops!)

And to make it really funky, it could

Every Oasis song is derivate of the Beatles song “Rain” (video).

On 2nd Avenue & St. Mark’s, there’s a noise band performing on a rooftop near the intersection, and as you walk east, the nature of the sound reflections change in weird ways.

Since my wife brought her grandfather’s old analog radio into our apartment, we basically always have classic music running the background.

Rain was released on May 30th, 1966. I never thought of songs having birthdays, but could be neat to track culture events you care about, and then everyday, there’s a set of 5-10 things “On This Day” that are curated to you.

Set your alarm clock to a classical music radio station.