Friday, September 13, 2013
Hello, I am a Band now.
Good Evening. It has been some years since I have spoken with you, since we have shared words. I have been on a magical journey—to use the words of a showman—and I would like to tell you about it.
I am a band, now. Perhaps I am several bands, it is hard to say. This is how it happened.
There was a boy who thought well of himself, and he was quite fond of the latest, flashiest technologies. His iPhone, that Judas's cradle of the modern world, that bearer of hollow crux and vinuous grasp, came into my possession one day. On it was a harmless-looking computer program, and when, on a lark of sorts, on a long drive, I opened it up—it allowed me to place small blocks in a grid, and those blocks became sounds. They became music, they became tunes, through the machinery of men who work in Cupertino, California. It sounds like a false place of fallen orchards and glass, but their perversion has created something useful to me.
I was immediately taken with this easy ability to put down the tunes in my head, and change them over time to suit the knowledge I was gaining. Wikipedia.org, that great website, taught me of "circles of fifths," and "counterfeit modulation." Such lofty terms. So, fancy. But they are useful, hard-won things. They ride unto us on the shoulders of madmen, of lunatics who died from their exertions in the service of music, strangled upon the tether from which they hung by the heavens. Beethoven. The mournful Russian Rachmaninoff. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (diminutive coprophiliac and giggler).
I am quite likely several bands. They suit my many moods.
1. FRAN.CE
I have found kin in that plastic instrument, that lipstick, the synthesizer. I do not know why, but its tones soothe me. Perhaps the precision of its "attack" and "decay" can be specified so cleanly, it is therapeutic. Please, enjoy the music of FRAN.CE.
2. Piano Dan
Perhaps you might say, he is my "alter ego." Or just a character I have schemed up. A "piano-loving friend" who diddles all the night and day on his keys, creating the most delightful—or perhaps the least delightful—simple piano melodies. I imagine him as serious, silent, leaving when he is done, walking up round the fertile berm of the lane that wound from home to the world beyond.
3. Downtown Mammal
This is something I don't know that I do.
ENGINEERING NOTE
As you have been aware, I am not of an ease with computers. This "iTunes," with its crazy spelling, is something I simply cannot make known to me. To hear Téodor say it, the songs become one in the air, and appear on devices which have an understanding placed in them by the wealthy. I will have none of it. In my world, music is a good old thing, listened to on cassettes, and easily shared in that way. Because I can not e-mail you all a cassette, however, I played my iPhone into my tape recorder, then played my tape recorder at a computer's microphone. From there it was a hop-skip to share my first song with you. If you enjoy it, please hold your own tape recorder to your computer's speaker, and then carry it with you wherever you go.
MY FIRST SONG
Orris Root Tango - Peter H. Cropes, Programmer of the Piano
This little tune may be considered how it feels to drive at night, down the furrowed hard-clay lanes of Parish Amortane, Louisiana, between the orris fields and the fragrant sassafrass, knowing it was time to do what you had felt building inside you for many days.
I am a band, now. Perhaps I am several bands, it is hard to say. This is how it happened.
There was a boy who thought well of himself, and he was quite fond of the latest, flashiest technologies. His iPhone, that Judas's cradle of the modern world, that bearer of hollow crux and vinuous grasp, came into my possession one day. On it was a harmless-looking computer program, and when, on a lark of sorts, on a long drive, I opened it up—it allowed me to place small blocks in a grid, and those blocks became sounds. They became music, they became tunes, through the machinery of men who work in Cupertino, California. It sounds like a false place of fallen orchards and glass, but their perversion has created something useful to me.
I was immediately taken with this easy ability to put down the tunes in my head, and change them over time to suit the knowledge I was gaining. Wikipedia.org, that great website, taught me of "circles of fifths," and "counterfeit modulation." Such lofty terms. So, fancy. But they are useful, hard-won things. They ride unto us on the shoulders of madmen, of lunatics who died from their exertions in the service of music, strangled upon the tether from which they hung by the heavens. Beethoven. The mournful Russian Rachmaninoff. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (diminutive coprophiliac and giggler).
I am quite likely several bands. They suit my many moods.
1. FRAN.CE
I have found kin in that plastic instrument, that lipstick, the synthesizer. I do not know why, but its tones soothe me. Perhaps the precision of its "attack" and "decay" can be specified so cleanly, it is therapeutic. Please, enjoy the music of FRAN.CE.
2. Piano Dan
Perhaps you might say, he is my "alter ego." Or just a character I have schemed up. A "piano-loving friend" who diddles all the night and day on his keys, creating the most delightful—or perhaps the least delightful—simple piano melodies. I imagine him as serious, silent, leaving when he is done, walking up round the fertile berm of the lane that wound from home to the world beyond.
3. Downtown Mammal
This is something I don't know that I do.
ENGINEERING NOTE
As you have been aware, I am not of an ease with computers. This "iTunes," with its crazy spelling, is something I simply cannot make known to me. To hear Téodor say it, the songs become one in the air, and appear on devices which have an understanding placed in them by the wealthy. I will have none of it. In my world, music is a good old thing, listened to on cassettes, and easily shared in that way. Because I can not e-mail you all a cassette, however, I played my iPhone into my tape recorder, then played my tape recorder at a computer's microphone. From there it was a hop-skip to share my first song with you. If you enjoy it, please hold your own tape recorder to your computer's speaker, and then carry it with you wherever you go.
MY FIRST SONG
Orris Root Tango - Peter H. Cropes, Programmer of the Piano
This little tune may be considered how it feels to drive at night, down the furrowed hard-clay lanes of Parish Amortane, Louisiana, between the orris fields and the fragrant sassafrass, knowing it was time to do what you had felt building inside you for many days.
