GP & Twelve-Tone

Reading George Perle’s Twelve-tone Tonality (I’ll explain 12 tone more when I got a bit more time), but I think it’s aesthetically interesting that he developed his compositional technique, in part, based on a misunderstanding of Schoenberg’s original serial method.

John Cage

I’m still out of town, so blogging has been delayed a lot.  I came accross this: John Cage’s 639 year composition.  It started in 2001 and is now on the 6th note.  We talk about Cage in our Appreciation class.  He was a really fascinating character – as much an aesthetic philosopher as a composer.  [...]

New Music

Lisa’s cousin – Darren Jahn – is a very talented musician, and has recently written and produced a new song; he’s also an aspiring photographer. I first met Darren when Lisa and I were dating (like 17 years ago?), and we instantly clicked (he’s an easy guy to click with), particularly on music. [...]

Musical Seizures

I’ve been reading (a bit at a time) Oliver Sacks’ latest book, Musicophilia (thanks to Stephen!). He discusses various types of musical “hallucinations” and epilepsies (among many other things), and this article discusses a very recent case, triggered by her favorite Reggae music (musicogenic epilepsy). I’d recommend any of Sacks’ books; they are [...]

Music Psychology

One of the other benefits of the hiking trip was the plane rides, and getting to read a book. I got through Dan Levitin’s new book, “This Is Your Brain On Music.” I got to meet him once in grad school (we were both presenting on the same session of a conference) – [...]