frey

Sorry kids, that’s probably it from me until the end of January. I’m out picking apricots in Central Otago. Download my music while I’m gone, write me some comments or even an email.

And if you download music, and like it, click the link on the left and donate me some cash! I have to eat too you know.

Love ya,
d

Final lift for this round – Katiki Beach to Dunedin. Picked up by a friendly chap who was also working on the new prison. He was one of those very friendly not-qute-religious types you get sometimes – people who feel like they’ve got the whole world understood, and want to share some of this with the next generation. We had some good old rambly chats about this and that – steered clear of politics because it would’ve ended up just being an anti-American session, with neither of us really learning anything. It’s quite difficult to have an interesting conversation with someone you agree with, I’ve found – which seems to run at odds to the idea of politeness that we have but there you go.

The University of Otago has the most beautifully designed library in the whole universe. I spent a couple of hours there waiting for my friend to get back from his bike ride, and it’s a lovely place to be in. Hope it stays that way – architecturally designed buildings like libraries have a habit of becoming old quite rapidly.

Next day, wandered into Arc Cafe and within 5 minutes had the contact details of someone named Iso12 who also likes making horrible noises. As I write this we haven’t had a jam yet but it will happen hopefully tomorrow – followed by a Crude gig at Arc. Hooray for random people and happy coincidences.

If I wet my finger, I can rub a clear spot on the opaque wrapper of some speech-sound, such as “I.” By rubbing hard enough, I can make a hole in the wrapper. Through this hole, the significance of “I” can leak out, its wrapper dissolved, and I find myself surrounded by and surrounding the music of “I.” Ah–eh–eee. Around me, when I really get to know “I,” are several pitched components moving in independent rhythms. These are physically caused by, and their rhythms are related to, the movements of the tongue, jaw, and lips in a mouth producing this sound. At first blush, “I” may seem only a sequence of two sound-qualities, ah and eee, with a hint of a middle sound, eh, at least implicit. By living with this sound long enough and attending to it carefully, it is possible to hear a counterpoint of at least two areas of pitch in motion. The changing relation of the two, when combined with an underlying, relatively static sound, composes and overall trajectory that can be chunked into the simplistic sequence of the ah, eh, eee. Even the underlying sound changes and reveals its own complexity: its shocking, explosive beginning and evaporative end, and the steady granularity that sustains it. Even more: the shocking beginning hesitates as it explodes, the steady granularity has blemishes and wavers, and so on. “I” is a musical composition. Its decomposition and reconstitution are a matter of everyday technique–both musical and technological–for composers of computer music. “I” is a relatively simple composition, and can be part of much more complex compositions such as “silent” and “time,” which in turn may be composed into more complex music.

– John Rahn, ‘Differences‘, from Perspectives of New Music vol 31 no 2 (Summer 1993)