Rehearsal number 13

• Arco non-divisi gives a double stop way more force in the strings

• Viola's down bows naturally means we hear the higher note more

• Most audible: Eb4 violin, Bb3 viola, Fb3 celli, Cb4 (written) contra bass

• The actual chord is bonkers! Eb-7 add b9 #5 Eb7/Fb add b9 #5

• On piano, this chord sounds crazy and messy, but with strings, it sounds perfect

• The French horns add this girth to the emphasis… The French horns are squarely in their warm and mellow territory, and there are eight of them!

Rehearsal number 14

• The cello is doing an alternation between an E chord and a C chord. Interestingly, both of these chords are related by a major third in their roots.

• The bassoons are playing sixteenths in contrast to the cello eighth notes. Sounds perfect together... cello pizzicato and bassoons playing twice as fast in the same register.

• The bassoon's first outline a C chord an E minor chord, which keeps to the movement of the major third between the roots of these chords. The oboe plays the theme established by the French horn in rehearsal number seven.

Rehearsal number 15

• The triplet figure here gets passed around like a hot potato

• Oboe to trumpet to oboe to violin I (pizzicato) to the trumpet

• Beautifully written flute part here marks a division in the section by contrast. Feel free to use the flutes in this percussive, jet whistle way to make things really intense and ballsy, or as Ravel did when he would use percussion to mark a new section. Punctuation as McKay would state it.

Rehearsal 9

• Alto flute: fluttery, compound melodies in a warm territory
• Oboe: pops out with a solo in it’s golden range
• Added colors… clarinet in D, flute, B♭ clarinet, weird melodic textures
• Alto flute grouped in 10, flutes in 5 and 7. Really strange and fun!
How on earth anyone conducts this is beyond me. Can't hear the beat for how obfuscated it is.

Rehearsal 10–11

• Back to a weird pulsating rhythm.
• Rhythm detail: same figure as earlier with grace-notes in the bassoons
• Contrabass is playing in these offbeat accents that read as strong beats, simply because of their register and power
• Highly polyphonic and weird…. demands strong rhythmic foundation
• Trumpets cut through; other parts form a moving wall of sound, melodically speaking.
• Strings? They’re barely audible, provide sustained bed beneath active lines
• I would love to sit in a chair right behind the conductor to hear these two sections specifically.

Rehearsal 12

• Reestatement of main theme from Writer Spring
• Clarinet tril in chalameau range is a "motion as sustaining sound" design.
• Beautiful contrasts. Strings entering here in a chord sounds magical compared to what he previously established with the woodwinds. Massive time based contrast with regards to timbre.

Melodic layers and orchestral texture

• The passage is highly polyphonic. It’s gorgeous.

• Rehearsal letter 7:

  • English Horn echoes the main melody first stated in beginning of the entire ballet.

  • Clarinet in D: short downward-sloping four-note bursts in a pleasant register. Sounds sad and scary when melodies go downward like this, kindof like they are spinning downwards. Maybe that melody listened to too much Nine Inch Nails. Bah dum!

• Rehearsal letter 8:

  • Multiple simultaneous melodies; flute takes a bright, strongly linear, acrobatic melody that jumps octaves.

  • Alto flute functions as texture but remains clearly melodic. It’s felt more than projected.

  • Clarinet piccolo in D doubles a similar line to rehersal 7, but stands out due to relative intensity vs. the flute.

• Observations on doubling and clarity:

  • When two instruments are doing interesting melodic work at the same time (e.g., flute and clarinet piccolo in #8), contrasting registral placement and differing melodic structure (linear vs. closed and bursty fragment) help them be heard distinctly; putting the lines in very different registers increases perceptual separation.

Rhythm and articulation

• Stravinsky achieves a highly unsettling rhythmic effect with relatively little material between rehearsal letters 7–8.

• Cello solo: plays Pizzicato on the offbeat, creating displacement against the pulse.

• Bass clarinet: strongly linear rhythmic ostinato with frequent grace notes.

• Clarinets (two in A): rich territory, doubled writing with many grace notes.

• In rehearsal letter 8 the bassoons take over the rhythm role in roughly the same manner as the clarinet and bass clarinet had in rehersal number 7.

• Also at rehersal 8 the clarinet in A shifts from unison doubling toward more blend of differentiated motion. This is a nice trick I’m going to remember.

Sustained sonorities and harmonic color

• Rehearsal letter 7:

  • Alto flute provides a warm sustained color on strong beats.

  • French horn sustains a concert D5, contributing a warm “golden” territory.

  • “Elbow” (likely an instrument/line labeled in the score) trails as a sustaining motion in the same warm register.

• Rehearsal letter 8:

  • Contrabass soloist sustains a mellow B♭2 as an anchoring sound.

1. The amount of fluttering polythematic design here makes for a very dissonant but entirely interesting sound.

   • I can barely hear the sustained French Horns (which are squarely in their most mellow sonority), the flutes (trilling about in their pleasant color tone range).

   • The only sustained sound I can hear is the violin trills that are just barely inside their most pleasant register.

2. Notice the switch in timbre between the oboe (fairly sharp and brash sounding) to the cor anglais (fiarly round and darker).

   • Love how that these two parts are played fairly close to each other in terms of relative intensity, but the idea is that their tonal colors would be both roughly “golden.”

3. The last part of this section has a chromatically planed major triad split between the second flute (rich territory), an alto flute (warm territory), and the cor anglais (glowing). The color of these three combined with the first flute in it’s pleasant territory as any melody of any choir ought to be with this design, stands out.

   • The triad sounds incredibly dissonant and again throws Fux and Gradus Ad Parnassum completely away.

   • The violin trill in a pleasant range is a nice color contrast to the extraordinarily colorful woodwind figure.

   • The violin trill also provides a simultaneous contrast of free form rhythm (the trill) when paired with the more measured rhythm of the chromatically planed triad and melody.

1. Further down the firm denial of Fux’s Gradus Ad Parnassum: Notice the bassoons doing a well-designed dove-tail in perfect 4ths. Mad.

2. The English Horn seems to be spinning around itself, like a kid on a merry go round

3. In each section, I’m beginning to see the dovetailing of each instrument. Strong move: Keeps the sound of an instrument limited by breath present without having to kill a woodwind player outright (or watching him/her go blue in the face)

1. A thought when it comes to unaccompanied solos: Feel not afraid to use fermatas.

   • Unaccompanied bassoon melody high up in it’s range. In the hands of a novice bassoonist, this melody would no doubt sound quite squeaky.

   • Interesting to note that the height of the melody in it’s range was specifically chosen for the bassoon. Ravel might’ve looked at this and said, “why not English Horn?”

   • Contrast of the bassoon in this range to the french horn, clarinet in A, Eb, and the bass clarinet. Harsh woodwind has the melody, soft woodwinds have the polyphonic countermelodies.

2. Notice that contrary motion doesn’t exist. Firm denial of Fux and Gradus Ad Parnassum.

3. English horn provides a little relief for the bassoonist.

Just about every serious composer looks with awe and drea at The Rite of Spring, and I include myself in this category. My teacher in college, the wonderful Carol Hess, introduced The Rite of Spring to us hapless, hopeful undergrads. I was mystified by it’s power, uncompromising intensity, and set an intention to study it more seriously… one day.

Compositional Outlook of The Rite of Spring

What follows is a brief overview of the compositional outlook by Stravinsky in The Rite of Spring.

• Stravinsky tended to melodically and harmonically structure the Rite in three ways:

  • Shorter, more lyrical melodies in general (3-4 note patterns) with heavy rhythmic and melodic variation.

  • Employing boistrous, explosive, and rhythmic designs for the orchestra, at times overwhelming the listener with the depth of power.

  • Getting dark with his harmonic vocabulary towards the latter half of the Rite.

• Stravinsky loved changing time signatures. Any casual glance at the score will show how he loved shaking the meter of the music all up. He pretty much liberated himself from the historical constraints of rhythm.

• Polyphony. He used the hell out of it.

• Polytonality. He often wrote melodies in one key, harmonies/rhythmic accompaniments in another. Yet, there was always a sort of consistency. It sounded dissonant sometimes. Altogether, the dissonance is quite pleasing.

• Melodies established in earliest parts of the Rite have a tendency to resurface, thus creating a melodic through-line that binds parts together. I love doing this in my film scores, and it was a joy to see that Stravinsky hadn’t completely abandoned this practice.

• As far as orchestrations go, Stravinsky loved really weird instruments in the woodwinds. He would often change the timbre of each section, but by focusing on the woodwinds.

  • There’s a school of thought that asserts that woodwinds can be broken down into two basic groups: Soft woodwinds (flute and clarinet) and harsh woodwinds (oboe and bassoon).

  • Stravinsky made full use of the auxillery woodwinds and changed up the sound from one part to the next.

Compositional Live-Blog

I don’t know exactly whether or not I will keep doing this, but I have a mind to share my own thoughts as I work my way through the Rie of Spring. I tend to go section by section, until I finish my analysis.

I won’t commit to finishing this publically, but who knows. I might just do that. I’ll start here.

Reading Notes

8-10 Minute Read | Laptop or Tablet Recommended

Topics and Themes

How obsession kept me from enjoying life beyond music; The dark side of obsession; Living a better life with respect to our needs.

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When you make a purchase through links found on this site, we may earn commissions from Amazon, Perfect Circuit, and other retailers.

I suspect that I came off as ridiculously intense to my colleagues when I was at college. I arrived to the guitar program with halfway decent guitar-chops but with zero experience playing jazz and classical guitar. I barely had any knowledge of music theory. Because I felt so behind, I practiced 6 to 8 hours a day on top of schoolwork, classes, and the occasional jam session. Practicing took a great deal of time away from just being a kid, enjoying my life, and at exploring who I was. I grew up in college, but a little faster than I think was healthy. I bet many reading this blog can relate. Sometimes, we creatives do more than is necessary to make things happen.

When I look back, I most clearly remember the emotional heaviness of my time at college. I didn't allow myself the chance to slack off. The upside was that I felt the continued march of progress, but I never measured up to the ideal firmly placed in my mind. I was always practicing, always engaged, always a hyper-motivated overachiever. Nose permanently attached to the grindstone. A slog. A rat-race of my own creation.

There were additional costs to my extreme focus. I had multiple bouts with carpal tunnel syndrome and tendonitis. I felt tired all the time because I refused to give myself rest days. When I slept through my alarm, I totally chastised myself for it. I didn't explore or travel. I missed thousands of chances to meet really interesting people. I smoked a lot of cigarettes and drank many cups of coffee to keep myself going. I ate poorly. I buried my ever-growing feelings that I wasn't good enough, that I wasn't ever going to be good enough, underneath an avalanche of work. During a few dark nights of the soul, I wondered if I was really going to amount to anything. A few times, I wondered if I was even born to be a musician.

I wouldn't change a thing about these experiences. Sure, I shake my head at the sheer dumbassery of it, but hindsight is 20/20. I learned. As my Dad often said, "The only time you mess up is if you make the same mistake twice."

The hyper-motivated creatives I know (and love) seem especially vulnerable to the style of focus I had in college. These creatives often get so wrapped up in their own thoughts, ambitions, or achievements that engaging with the world beyond seems tough. To many of them, what’s going on with the culture they live in has the potential to overwhelm and challenge them beyond what they're able to handle. What an occupational hazard! Don't get me wrong: I think the willingness to go myopic can can bring something gorgeous to the world. I just don't believe we need to take our creativity so seriously that we forget about our immediate and pressing realities, or miss some great opportunities to take our lives in newer, more interesting and enlightening places. Sure, some hard-working souls might defend their passionate, single-minded focus with vigor. But I don't think focus is quite the right word for it. What I'm talking about is obsession.

I believe there needs to be a broader discussion about the merits of obsession. Culturally, it's clear that many people in America today believe that obsession will lead to success, wealth, and prosperity. A former student of mine remarked that she worked 100+ hour weeks for two years as an investment banker. Another friend of mine who owns a store in South Austin often proudly (but heavily) speaks of his heavy 90+ hour workweek and how much profit his store makes. I have friends in the film industry who work so hard that I see their health deteriorating, right before my eyes.

Health issues aside, the emotional and spiritual costs of obsession are legion. I can't help but worry about my friends in the film industry. If they receive any recognition or success, they think it's the result of how obsessed they are with "making it." But, if their success doesn't come, I see them get incredibly despondent. I've seen them want to quit the creative life. If I let them know I’m worried about them, it doesn’t help. They might tell me I'm crazy for taking the weekends off. They have the narrative that they need to be 110% committed, obsessed, working til their eyeballs bleed, or else they won't be successful.

I suppose I ought to just come out and say what I really think:

Obsession just doesn't work. There's something that stinks to holy hell about it.

Obsession blinds us to the realities in our actual day-to-day lives. It forces a myopic, it-has-to-be-this-way attitude that can at times be super incongruent with what is actually important. It has an intense inflexibility to it. It forces a woodenness in our thinking that can catch fire and burn everything up in a heartbeat (this happened to me, and it was an epic fail). It has the potential to create massive health issues due to a continued lack of balance. It makes us wonder if we'll ever "make it," if we'll ever be at the top of our games, if we'll ever experience the outrageous success we think we deserve.

Obsession's biggest chink in the armor is that we can lose our focus quickly upon a shake-up of our life circumstances, either negative or positive. I experienced this firsthand when I fell in love in the last semester of graduate school. I felt so good that I simply put the guitar down for two months. I was sick of relentless pace of practicing and performing. I felt incredibly raw, tangled, and creaky, and the idea of being with a gorgeous woman took over my attention completely. Can you blame me?

What's the point of being obsessed if circumstances change? What good is obsession if it blurs our original quest for expression? What's the point of being obsessed if it means we can't remain flexible enough to take advantage of something better? Why be ridgidly obsessed if we miss things that have great potential for bringing a great deal of happiness to our lives?

To me, obsession's many dark sides make it untenable. If you're with me on this, perhaps the next question to ask is whether one can thrive, succeed, and prosper without obsession. Can we actually create anything without being completely obsessed with it? Can we be at the top of our game AND have balance?

I think we can, and Trevor Lawrence, a well-known NFL quarterback, is living proof that we can work hard and keep it light and easy:

...I want people to know that I’m passionate about what I do and it’s really important to me, but I don’t have this huge chip on my shoulder, that everyone’s out to get me and I’m trying to prove everybody wrong, And I think people mistake that for being a competitor. I think that’s unhealthy to a certain extent, just always thinking that you’ve got to prove somebody wrong, you’ve got to do more, you’ve got to be better.

Lawrence's post confused a lot of sports commentators and fans. Many accused him of being unmotivated to play the game. He basically snubbed the ethos in America that we need to be obsessed with our work to be successful at it. Yet, the fact is that Lawrence works harder than anyone else at being the best NFL quarterback possible. He's motivated. To use his words, he grinds hard. He's a living example of a highly successful person who isn't obsessed with what he does and still works harder than anyone else at it. Although I'm not the biggest fan of the NFL, his willingness to stand by his words and to value balance over having a chip on his shoulder offers a perfect example of how to do great work without killing ourselves.

I have since learned the value of balance in my life. I have learned to keep my commitments light. I rest on the weekends, often getting 10+ hours of sleep. If I sleep even longer, I shrug it off and tell myself that I must've needed the sleep. I allow myself to fully relax at home, with no structured activities. I travel more. I make time to smoke cigars with my closest friends. I invest a lot of my time into people who make me feel like I've already arrived to where I want to be in my life. I invest my energy into feeling the future that I want. Like attracts like.

Obsession might work to get you a high degree of success. It might help you achieve your wildest dreams. I won't argue with it. There’s some truth to that. It certainly has worked for others. But at what cost? There are many tradeoffs.

It helps to know that success can come in many more forms than just our career. Being rich in happiness is being rich indeed. Having a wealth of friends, a community, good neighbors, and silence when we need it? All of these are godsends. Sleep is the new sex. Having the ability to take the day off if we need one is one of the biggest luxuries imaginable. Hard work can have a lightness and ease to it. We can grind hard without harming our bodies. We can do good work when we do it with love for ourselves, with respect for what we've been given. It’s worthy of our time, the very limited amount of time we have on earth, to challenge ourselves to be a little bit more like Trevor Lawrence: Grounded, hard-working, overachieving, balanced, content, and (I think) happy.

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Reading Notes

9-11 Minute Read | Laptop or Tablet Recommended

Topics and Themes

Why exporting our entire lives to technology and AI is terrible for our artistic souls and ultimate happiness, finding balance between the pursuits we love and the tasks we can't stand.

Affiliate Note

When you make a purchase through links found on this site, we may earn commissions from Amazon, Perfect Circuit, and other retailers.

In his disturbingly-accurate book The World Beyond Your Head, author Matthew Crawford convinced me that actively engaging with the work we deliberately choose in our lives is essential for developing a sense of who are as artists. I used the words "disturbingly-accurate" because the book implies that when we rely too heavily on technology to do as many tasks as possible for us, we risk losing our ability to think critically and connect meaningfully with the world.

Crawford emphasizes that hands-on interaction through work, hobbies, and everyday tasks nourishes a deeper understanding of ourselves, our environment, and the balance between them. He argues when we take an active role in the work that fulfills us on a deep level, we develop a deeper mindfulness about who we are. Perhaps the most fulfilling work we do has the possibility to enhance our state of sovereignty in the world (let alone our standing). It is only by taking responsibility for our decisions, the actions that arise out of our willingness to choose to invest our energy in one area or another, that we can create a more authentic and satisfying life.

In sharp contrast, passively consuming experiences and conveniences that comes with more sophisticated technology, or allowing a digital presence to do everything for us, perhaps makes us more vulnerable to losing our individuality and also our relationship to the world. Doing so is almost as if we are intentionally fucking with our own foundations of what it means to be human.

Strong and mighty words, you might be thinking?

Crawford's book doesn't let up. Page after page, I found plenty of reasons why it's better to be engaged with tasks that I could automate but choose not to (like, writing this blog. Hello, AI. I think you owe me some royalties).

I will fully admit that a good portion of The World Beyond Your Head went ungracefully… over my head. I'll probably read it four more times before I truly understand it. I was introduced to the book through my brother who absolutely raved about it (My brother is always first in reading awesome books, and I'm always trying to catch up to him). When I finally read it, I stared agog at the concepts Crawford freely and easily threw around. He doesn't pull any punches. It was humbling to be shown exactly how little I knew about the world of philosophy. It makes me chuckle to experience limitations of my vocabulary. Personal pride aside, the book is packed full of the kind of information we need to hear in our lives, now, as 2026 moves forward and we’re well beyond the dawn of the age of artificial intelligence.

In a nutshell, the message that I heard most loudly and clearly from The World Beyond Your Head is that it's a good thing to deliberately choose to do meaningful work ourselves, to do the labor ourselves with zeal, no matter the return.

John Williams’ Choices

The part of the book that was left unsaid, at least as far as my painfully slow first reading, was what we ought to consider tossing aside. Surely, there are tasks I love to do, and there are tasks that surely lead to a slow mediocrity if I kept at them long enough (I’m remembering all the busy-work my high school teachers gave me just to occupy my time). This line of thought forced me to question the balance between the work I choose to do with my own wits, and the work I choose to automate via technology.

Naturally, all arguments about this balance lead back to the process of creating music, but after reading the book my mind expanded towards the creation of art and of creativity in general. I stared, impolitely, at the state of doing creative stuff nowadays. I couldn't help but wonder: Are we to export all parts of the creative process to artificial intelligence and still call ourselves individuals? Or on the other hand, do we wish to burn ourselves out and do everything in a mad dash to claim our own piece of the pie? Which parts do we want to allow someone or something else handle for us? Where's the balance? How do we do art without becoming a technophobe conspiracy theorist but also engage with the work that gives us the most meaning in our lives?

After thinking about it for awhile, I began to wonder about the most well-known artists in my field, film composing. Did they have the balance I was after? One of them, for certain. And he is a king in Hollywood.

A perfect example of a well-known composer who has this balance, a person who favors the use of a simple piano, pencil, paper, and his wits, is the film composer John Williams. His work is heard on nearly every single Steven Spielberg film. And still, as far I know, he hasn't once relied upon even a computer to write his music. He still sits at a piano and writes music by hand. The music takes longer for him to create than most modern composers by comparison; Most composers who write orchestral music for film today are taking clear advantage of the copy & paste function in a music scoring program like Dorico. He chooses to write his notes out, one at a time.

The interesting thing is to wonder about the entire process of film composing for a musician at John Williams' level. I'm positive that he does not do everything himself. I don't think it's a stretch to posit that John Williams has a small army of musicians that love to transfer his ideas that he wrote with a pencil and staff paper into a music scoring program, again, like Dorico. This is a necessary part of the process of getting an original music score ready to be recorded. If skipped, the whole process looks to waste a great deal of resources. Here's why:

First, the master score needs to be digitized so that the conductor in the studio can see the notes clearly (usually Williams conducts his film scores in the studio). Second, when the time comes to extract parts, meaning generating a separate piece of sheet music for each instrument and musician in the film orchestra, having a computerized score score makes short work of that process.

Perhaps you were wondering, "That's all fine and dandy, but why not just start with the computer and save a step altogether?" Probably because John Williams is king, works with Steven Spielberg, and is in his 90's. He doesn't need to. He can hire out all the people to take care of the things that he doesn't want to do, things that don't excite or interest him, things that obviously need to get done but that he just doesn't have the headspace to finish himself.

It seems balanced to me how this works: John Williams composes the way he composes because it has obviously worked for him and the films he's worked on. Three Academy Awards to boot. And yet, he outsources the less sexy parts of that process to others that he trusts to get the job done correctly. In other words, there's a balance between the tasks that are extremely fulfilling and meaningful for him (the composing) and the tasks that need to be completed but don't excite him probably one bit (inputting notes on a computer scoring program, extracting parts, etc).

In the age of artificial intelligence, there's a temptation to wonder if computers can do everything for us. For example, I know of many people who already rely upon AI to produce everything in their business, from writing content for their blogs (I use AI to proofread and make suggestions for better flow, just to be clear) all the way to creating entire companies with tightly wrapped, branded products. I have heard of photographers completely letting go of grabbing their camera and letting AI create an image for them. Ditto for YouTubers looking to get a new piece of content for their channels. I’m constantly on the defence for taking time to create teaching materials or blogs because of the time and energy it costs me. I just can't bring myself to export the process for someone, or something, to handle for me. I can't just have AI write a blog for me. You'd know it in a second that the blog was written by AI. It would annoy you. Or, I assume it would.

Besides, the deeper issue is what happens when we let something who has pretty much no skin in our game as artists create for us. When we allow a robot who basically doesn’t care beyond excuting a prompt correctly to create for us, are we not losing something in the process? I dare say that we lose some of our agency and sovereignty... hell, I think we are losing boatloads of our passion as creatives. Do we really want that, just in this dogged, damned effort to save time, make money, and feed this stupid content machine? Just to make ourselves feel better and important that we have this digital assistant that does our dirty work for us for free? Sounds a little... boujee.

In coming back to the example of John Williams, a man who works with a pencil, a piano, and composes using just his own wits and personal musical history, can we not take a little something from his example in our own lives?

The answer lies in what we wish to do with our time.

Are there tasks that only we should do? Surely. Are there tasks that we probably shouldn't do and leave to a computer? Surely. The trick is figuring out which tasks belong where, and I believe that's a conversation we ought to have with ourselves, often.

Perhaps a couple of obvious examples will do here.

Would I want an AI to meditate for me every morning? Rhetorical question.

Would I want a robot to do Yoga for me every morning? Ditto.

Do I want AI to decide what Eurorack patch I want to create? What guitar chord to play? How to compose a melody? No, no, and no. I like doing all of these tasks. They make my life richer, more fulfilling, and I love feeling the agency in the work that I choose.

But certainly, I can find tasks for computers that seem super unsexy to me. For example, a chunk of my day is spent taking a close look at which emails deserve a response. Thankfully, many email programs automatically filter emails according to importance. I take liberal advantage of that. The only exception is when I get an unsolicited email about SEO placement offers. I love laughing out loud at their emails right before I spam the living shit out of them.

Another task? Scheduling guitar lessons. I remember the dark days of my teaching practice when I scheduled all lessons by hand, in a paper scheduling book. I would have at least four back-and-forth email exchanges between prospective students, and half the time, they wouldn't show up for their first lesson. It felt awful to sit outside my office, waiting for a student who would just never come. So, when online booking came around, I instantly saw the potential. When a student booked a first lesson, I gave this person the choice of time slot, immediately. I also gave them information like directions to my office, where to park, and what the first lesson is like. I also required payment on the first lesson, which cut down the amount of no-call-no-shows. Systemizing the booking of lessons instantly saved me three hours of work each week, hours that I could spend doing something more fun, like writing songs.

Let's do one more: I spend a large part of my Thursdays aggressively soliciting for more press and promotion opportunities for the albums on my record label. The hours I spent researching blogs! The hours I spent writing emails, trying to get them to listen, following up! Yuck! I remember clearly the moment when I found a couple of services that filtered promotion opportunities for me. Now, my music got submitted to hundreds of places automatically, and if a blogger liked the music they wrote about it. I could submit the music I wanted to promote to potentially thousands of blogs in 5% of the time. I felt a huge weight lift away from my shoulders. This freed up a good chunk of time to do things I enjoy doing a lot more, like writing blogs like this one.

The point is, I want to keep doing the tasks that give me a sense of fulfillment, tasks that define me as a human being, just as Matthew Crawford states in The World Beyond Your Head. I want to keep on composing, writing music, and engaging with the work that makes me feel alive. And also, I also want to outsource the work that has no place in my life other than to conspire to keep me busy, engaged, mediocre, and frankly, tired as hell.

What gets missed in the conversation about AI is exactly how much we seem to want to outsource everything to it, boring tasks as well as fulfilling tasks too. I wouldn't be at all surprised if in ten years most of my life could be handled by AI. This frightens me. I don't want to lose my sense of sovereignty. I don't want to allow someone else, AI or human, the chance to write music for me (unless I'm collaborating, of course, but only with humans, goshdarnit).

It just means more to do the work that makes me feel alive. And, it means more to let go of the busy work that I find incredibly silly.

Balance, baby. Balance.

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Short, rhythmic ambient track with melodic fragments caught in a web of delay and reverb. Available on Bandcamp, exclusively:

https://firefireredstardown.bandcamp.com/track/aelia

Reading Notes

7-9 Minute Read | Laptop or Tablet Recommended

Topics and Themes

Perception of time in film; The ways in which music affects how we experience time; Enhancing the emotional impact of a story.

The Thrill of Speed

Imagine walking up to a stunning Lamborghini. The driver of the car steps out, extends a hand for a greeting, and invites you to sit in the front passenger seat, holding the door open for you. You slide into the bucket seat, gaze at the sleek dashboard, and breathe in the rich aroma of the car.

The driver slides in, coolly inserts the key into the ignition, reaches into the back seat, and grabs two helmets. With a playful toss, the driver gives one to you: "You're going to need this for safety, just in case. But overall, I've got you covered. You're in good hands." You slip on the helmet, and the driver inspects your safety harness. With a huge Cheshire grin, the driver asks, "Are you ready?" You flash a thumbs up. “Okay then!”

The driver slams down on the accelerator, and the force of inertia pins you back into your seat. At first, you can’t help but feel utterly astonished by the speed. The car launches forward almost too quickly. The engine roars with an intensity unlike anything else you've ever heard or felt. Details whirl into a haze. The twists and turns, with the rubber squealing on the road, create a loud sound that completely arrests your attention. You don't notice your hands white-knuckling it, grabbing onto whatever handles you can find. Mountains zip by, and the dust trailing behind the car swirls like a massive storm.

You can’t help but love every second of it. And before you know it, the ride ends. You will never forget it.

Now, let’s try a different thought exercise. Let’s take a moment to explore nature.

A Journey Through Nature

Imagine approaching a trailhead that leads into a mountain range. You have your backpack, your food, and everything else you need for a week-long expedition. You’re ready to embrace the trail. The guide steps forward and shakes your hand. It’s your job to follow, as the guide leads the way. The guide doesn’t talk much... Not unfriendly by any means, just not particularly chatty. The guide prefers to speak up when there’s something noteworthy to share, something to highlight, something that holds importance. Otherwise, the silence envelops you, allowing space for your personal journey.

The guide leads you on a trek through peaks, valleys, and streams. You witness nature at her finest… golden eagles soaring far off in the distance, and the clear clarity of light when you ascend to higher elevations. The guide pauses frequently, allowing you to absorb the beauty surrounding you. A sense of peace washes over you.

Yet, from time to time, you also walk close to urban areas. One or two nights, light from these cities invades the inner flaps of your tent. Air pollution sometimes irritates your lungs. You walk through tracts of land that corporations abandoned after exploiting the area. You feel a deeper sense of grief as you witness the scars left on this part of the world.

The guide knows these areas well and discusses them in turn. You hired this particular guide for a promise of a genuine experience in this mountain range. The guide didn’t sugarcoat anything for you. Everything unfolded as it was.

You can't help but appreciate every second of it. And before you know it, the trek ends. You will never forget it.

The Connection to Film Composition

If you’re still with me, perhaps you’re thinking, “What is he getting at?”

This:

In the first example, Junkie XL was the Lamborghini driver, and Mad Max: Fury Road was the movie. Junkie XL composed the score for Mad Max: Fury Road. This huge, action-packed thriller grabs your attention from the first minute and refuses to let go until the end.

In the second example, the mountain guide was Nicholas Britell, and the movie was Moonlight. Nicholas Britell composed the score for Moonlight. This slow-moving indie drama invites you to immerse yourself in a narrative and perspective in the most gentle way.

Overall, the two stories I presented in the beginning illustrate one of the most important concepts in film composing: An audience's perception of time.

The Spectrum of Time Perception

Both experiences, though vastly different, reveal how filmmakers manipulate time with music when you watch their films.

The Slow Tick of Indie Dramas

In some indie dramas, viewers tend to perceive time as slow. It feels as if each second ticks onwards. For example, The Zone of Interest, a haunting exploration of the life of a Nazi officer in charge of Auschwitz, provides a prime example. Through sound and a minimal score, the film compels everyone to experience the weight of every second in a painfully conscious way.

The Vanishing Act of Action Films

In contrast, viewers frequently do not notice time at all in the big action films. It's almost as if time vanishes deliberately. Consider Dune and Dune: Part Two, both of which Hans Zimmer composed the scores for. He is well known for creating big action scores that make two hours fly by.

These films exemplify how different types of film scores shape the audience's perception of time, with indie dramas inviting reflection and action films quickening heartbeats.

An audience's experience of time while watching a movie can be illustrated on a spectrum, like this:

A movie can occupy any position on this spectrum. It depends entirely on the director and their vision for the film. Very rarely do directors chase the extremes on either side.

The Composer's Role in Shaping Time

A significant aspect of my role as a film composer involves determining exactly what the director wants the music to feel like, including how they want the audience to perceive time.

As much as I might want to plaster a slow indie drama with wall-to-wall music, that would do a great disservice to the film. I love how slow indie dramas afford me the opportunity to take my time with the pacing of the music. There is less pressure to make time vanish. The studios that support these movies prioritize making a point; often, they want to shift towards exploring the human experience. Music that highlights this humanity enables the audience to think and feel in a deeper way.

Similarly, if I took a minimalist approach and shied away from scoring for large drum ensembles, orchestras, and big synthesizers for a major studio action thriller, I’d get fired in an instant. When big studios get behind films to the point of putting 20 million dollars or more into them, they want to see a return on their investment. They want to ensure that time dissolves for the viewer. They want to enthrall people who are paying for a movie that they can escape into. In this instance, scoring music that makes time disappear couldn't get more important.

I often ask pointed questions about how the director wants the audience to experience time. I like to ask this one: “How much do you wish to put the audience in a hypnotic state with music in your film?”

The answer to that question influences how busy or unhurried, how thick or thin, how industrious or organic the score needs to sound.

The Resonance of Time in Storytelling

Ultimately, whether racing through an action-packed story or meandering through a dramatic narrative, the way a filmmaker structures time shapes not only the film but also the audience’s emotional journey.

Most writers and directors I’ve met harbor a deep respect for the power of story. They want an audience to connect with the characters, to identify with the changes they have undergone. They want viewers to join them on that journey. In addition, they want film-lovers to invest in the characters and the journey they went through.

The way an audience perceives time will directly affect how well a story resonates. If the music manages time effectively, the audience will care even more.

In other words: Filmmakers who carefully attend to time, and how music influences it, will communicate their stories in a much more impactful way.

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Lunae Lumin will be the latest ambient record to be released by Wicked Cities from a Distance (February 20th). Lunae Lumin is a concept album for the short story, A Perch Made of Moonlight.

This music was recorded and edited to a 432hz standard, which to some ears sounds way better than the perfectly tuned 440hz.

High resolution download of the story, the front and back covers, included with purchase:

Extremely influenced by Tim Hecker, Tomasz Bednarczyk, and Abul Mogard, the newest from Wicked Cities From A Distance focuses deeply upon a moving organ drone expressly synthesized through a Eurorack granular synthesis patch. It’s available for members of Fire, Fire, Red Star Down only.

Reading Notes

7-9 Minute Read | Laptop or Tablet Recommended

Topics and Themes

A behind the scenes look at the making of the ultimate horror-film foley device: The Nightmare Machine.

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When you make a purchase through links found on this site, we may earn commissions from Amazon, Perfect Circuit, and other retailers.

I would describe my Uncle Ambo (not his real name, “uncle” is an honorific title) as simultaneously the most intimidating and most loving person I've ever met in my life.

Ambo strikes a figure. He has a long Gandolf-style beard that reaches clear down past his chest. His yard is full of garden beds and BBQ equipment. I've never met anyone with so many tools. Routers, drills, presses, planers, joiners, you name it, he's got it. And he’s prepared for the end of the world. If there’s a zombie apocalypse, I’m going to Ambo’s house, first thing.

I've known Ambo for many years. We met because we ran in the same circle of people. At first, I thought he was the biggest dick. He was incredibly rude and brash to me the first time we met. I kept my distance for a good three years. Of course, I was friendly, but still, I gave him a wide berth.

As it turns out, Ambo only respects people who challenge him. It wasn't until I seriously dug into him, made fun of, and got really in his face in an incredibly aggressive way that he opened up. Not too much longer after that would I come to discover how deeply he cared about everyone and their well-being. If he saw someone about to get hurt, I have little doubt that he would step in and do the right thing, even if it messed him up. There’s stories there, but you’ll have to ask him about it.

Nonetheless, I mean it when I say it: Uncle Ambo is simultaneously the most intimidating and most loving person I've ever met.

I was blessed to live close to Uncle Ambo during the pandemic. Although the pandemic made things incredibly tough in so many ways, I was able to convince Ambo to hang out. He smoked a pipe. I smoked a cigar. We didn’t cough in each other’s faces. It worked.

The conversations always flowed. Ambo is probably the smartest man I've ever met. The amount of knowledge he has about building, construction, carpentry, woodworking, cooking, and lyrics to random b-sides from the 1940-1990 absolutely infuriates me. It’s annoying as shit!

But I do know about guitars. Naturally, Ambo and I bonded over them. We would share interesting videos of weird guitars we’d find. He recently sent me a guitar of Pat Methany's that made my back hurt just looking at it. It had about 50 strings, and looked about as many pounds of weight. Sometimes I’d find weird instruments and send them to him. We’d talk about pickups, the style of guitar body and the sound. We’d send interesting amplifier ideas back and forth. At one point, I believe that Ambo was the one who found the Apprehension Engine.

I can't imagine anything more frightening in a film than for there to be silence, and all of a sudden a single sound from the Apprehension Engine, at just the right moment. That video impressed both of us. After weeks of conversations, I think I finally got the courage to ask him if he might be interested in creating one for me. I told him he could have creative autonomy if he wanted it. I told him it just had to be scary as fuck. He agreed. We ended up calling it The Nightmare Machine.

Neither of us had no idea what we was getting into.

Protoyping the Nightmare Machine

Ambo loves to build prototypes of everything he wants to create more of. He calls them “jigs.” He did this with his cigar box guitars, of which he's created damned near three dozen of by this point. It wasn’t a stretch to make a prototype Nightmare Machine out of a cigar box. This is what he created.

I used this prototype Nightmare Machine on the soundtrack for Fetch, an indie short horror film directed by Heather Halstead. I dare say it sounded vicious and intense:

The Nightmare Machine Build, In Photos

As time marched on and the pandemic ended, we could all resume our lives without anymore interruptions. It took another couple of years before Ambo decided to try to build the actual Nightmare Machine. We were smoking on his back porch with his two rottweilers barking away, and he said, "It's time for me to built it."

Now we’re talking!

Ambo agreed to send me as many photos as he could remember to send. I received this one from him, showing the skeleton of the machine:

He added some more parts to the machine, including some grill metal he found for super cheap:

He began spraypainting the Nightmare Machine a dark, blood red, for obvious reasons:

Because Ambo has more than a decade of experience working with cigar box guitars, he began to create the circuitry and wiring for the machine in the metal grills. The switches look great with the red circles:

Here he is adding the guitar neck (further away) and the hurdy gurdy neck (closer). Notice how beefy the hurdy gurdy neck is:

I have no idea why Ambo signed up for this. I mean, looking at the wiring in the back of the engine gave me an headache. How the hell does he keep this shit in his head? As time marched on, more and more switches, plates, and finishing details went on the machine:

He even found three tiny music boxes and installed them on the top of the machine. I gotta say, that sounds as creepy as all get-out:

The spring reverb is powered by an analog spring driver by Bulinski Effect Pedals. I have to say that after trying out dozens and dozen of spring reverbs on well-known amplifier brands, none of them could come even close to the beautiful sound of the spring reverb Jim installed and this Bulinski spring driver:

Ambo added rulers to the front of the Nightmare Machine. Pressing them down creates an intensely creepy sound:

More wiring. More mind-blowing:

As time marched on, Ambo began to work on the most intense part of the machine, the Hurdy Gurdy wheel. We learned that we needed to adequately coat the hurdy gurdy wheel with rosin, cover the string in cotton, and only use cello strings to make the hurdy gurgy come alive. This was our first test:

Finished Build: The Bumper Warranty

Eventually, with the finishing touches done, Ambo said, "Take this fucking thing home. I'm tired of working on it. BTW, you have a bumper warranty."

"What's that?"

"Once I no longer see your bumper, your warranty is up."

I gingerly put the Nightmare Machine in my car, closed the trunk, and waved goodbye.

Right before leaving he said, "Be careful, there's people out there."

"There's always people out there."

Set up in my living room, this thing looked like a honking piece of gnarly intensity:

When I finally plugged it in, I couldn’t believe it. It sounded exactly as I imagined it would:

Conclusion

It thrills me that I had the balls, years ago, to aggressively make fun of Ambo to his face. Had I not given him that push, I don’t think we would have ever become close enough to collaborate on this machine.

It surprises me to this day exactly how full the world is of creative characters like him. I barely scratched the surface of his immense creativity in so many areas of life. His willingness to help build this Nightmare Machine, and allow me to tag along to document it, has boggled me. I obviously owe him a lot of coin for doing this. And hilariously enough, he doesn't mind that I owe him (for now). After all, he said, "I'd rather have you owe me than for you to cheat me out of it later."

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Kaffir Piano employs a variety of unconventional production techniques to make its less-than-two-minute track stand out. It is bass-focused, but not to the point of overshadowing the other elements. The atmosphere it creates lingers over the guitar and bass, perfectly capturing that moment when you come home from work at 6 PM, and it's already dark. You're home, but the day has slipped away.

The Double Headed Seagulls have never shied away from a tightly focused, harmonically experimental sound. Much of their music evokes a constantly shifting musical undercurrent. Flowery language aside, you can certainly count on The Double Headed Seagulls to push harmonic boundaries but in a very understated way. Kaffir Piano does just that.

Yellowish is a hip Hop beat from 2004. Recently discovered and remastered. For a behind the scenes look at KidShy, click here.

When the tree branches hold a great deal of weight with ice and snow, when the air seems almost too still for breathing, and when driving anywhere horrifies you, "Music For Ice Storms" is the remedy. This is music that serves you well if you'd just rather... not.

Though Wicked Cities From A Distance's prior two releases have explored the noisier side of ambient with both *Dual Portamento* and *Lodern*, "Music For Ice Storms" marks a return to the more relaxed, chill ambient roots. Always tinged with a slight edge of melancholy, this music is still perfect for a chill snow day.

Tracklist

1. Névé: A noun meaning granular snow on high mountains that has been compacted into dense, icy formations, related to "nival" conditions in snowy environments.

2. Gelid: An adjective meaning extremely cold, icy, or frosty, describing temperatures that go beyond "chilly" and penetrate to the bone.

No.

Think.

For.

Me.

Part of the joy of Eurorack synthesizers comes from their melodic generative algorithms. AfterLater Pachinko, a clone of the epic Mutable Marbles module, serves as a random chance machine, allowing musicians to set the guidelines for melodic construction. In other words, I specify the notes I want, the range I desire, and the rhythm I envision.

From there, Pachinko goes to work and creates music.

The resulting music often has a scientific feel to it. Music created as a byproduct of exploration can sometimes come off as clinical and unemotional. It wasn't until I began mastering this work that I realized one of the reasons I love exploring Eurorack so much is that much of my musical life outside this medium focuses on evoking the emotional heartstrings of listeners. This is a common aim for film composers, and for some, it can feel like emotional blackmail.

Nonetheless, this quick little album offers surprisingly fun moments. I found that the music works best when you're looking for something detached, unemotional, and not vying for your attention.

When director Maurice Moore and I started to talk about the music for Finding Solace, Maurice posed a significant challenge that I totally accepted: Craft music that could exist independently of the film itself. In essence, I accepted the task to compose a score that would resonate on its own, without the help of the visual and narrative context provided by the film. It was a mighty challenge, and I hope I rose to it.

To achieve the goal, I felt strongly that I needed to delve into the archives of America’s rich cinematic legacy. Throughout the history of film as an artistic medium, the orchestra has served as the primary instrument for creating iconic and memorable film scores. The emotional breadth and range offered by the orchestra surpasses that of any other musical tool available to film composers, and it was clear to me that Finding Solace required that sound.

Finding Solace skirts a line in contemporary independent filmmaking that’s rarely dared: It’s an ingenious mashup of Crash and Seven. There’s outright moments of intense syncronicity that follow with deeply intense horror. It was clear that I had to do music that at least attempted to bridge the two distinctive narrative genres while ensuring a cohesive melodic through-line in the film. If I succeeded or not, that’s certainly a good question! In the end, the score employs orchestra, piano, and an immensely reverberated guitar to express a profoundly tragic family drama, while chilling orchestral effects coalesce to establish an atmosphere filled with tension, darkness, and an overwhelming sense of harrowing intensity.

I had to go for broke with this movie. It needed music that matched the audacity of the story. If I wanted to rise to the challenge Maurice Moore threw at me, I had to go big or go home. The outcome is approximately 65 minutes of richly layered orchestral music. I hope you enjoy.