en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 60 http://www.audioscrobbler.net/data/webservices http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal The Last.fm journal for handmeups. Last.fm journals are a place to talk about all things music. http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2009/06/15/2ss1s9_the_music_that_i_liked_when_i_was_younger Mon, 15 Jun 2009 03:24:47 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2009/06/15/2ss1s9_the_music_that_i_liked_when_i_was_younger I tried to make a chart of who my favorite composers/bands were at different ages.

The format is:
Age - most favorite artist at the time (some others that I liked)

I'm 21 now.

10 - Green Day
11 - Metallica (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
12 - Metallica (Nirvana)
13 - Radiohead (Pixies, Weezer)
14 - Yes (Miles Davis, Pixies, Radiohead)
15 - Godspeed You Black Emperor! (Sigur Ros, Genesis, Radiohead, Yes, Miles Davis)
16 - King Crimson (Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Genesis, Miles Davis, Radiohead, Yes)
17 - Ludwig van Beethoven (Dmitri Shostakovich, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mogwai, Opeth, King Crimson)
18 - Ludwig van Beethoven (Mono, Sonic Youth, John Coltrane, Can, Béla Bartók, Anton Bruckner)
19 - Mono (Charles Mingus, Enslaved, Scott Walker, Sonic Youth, Ludwig van Beethoven, John Coltrane, Can)
20 - Merzbow (Keiji Haino, Talk Talk, Steve Reich, Evan Parker, The Velvet Underground, John Wiese, Mono, Can, Scott Walker, John Coltrane)
21 - Morton Feldman (John Cage, Arvo Pärt, La Monte Young, Luigi Nono, Giacinto Scelsi, Iancu Dumitrescu, Gérard Grisey, Tony Conrad, Charlemagne Palestine, Autechre, Merzbow, Keiji Haino)

Listening to Radiohead's Kid A when I was 13 was what got me interested in music in a serious way. My listening stagnated or regressed around the time that I was 19, but then I took some big steps during the last two years. I've said before that Merzbow introduced me to real music, and that's true in a sense.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2009/06/04/2rtb02_new_artistic_collaborations_are_possible_with_technology Thu, 4 Jun 2009 08:25:30 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2009/06/04/2rtb02_new_artistic_collaborations_are_possible_with_technology Listen to this vertical thrash from John Wiese and Robert Johnson:

www dot mediafire dot com slash ?tnnyio2wz2z

I have to type it like that because last.fm sucks.

The Robert Johnson song is If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day, and the John Wiese noise is from Black Magic Pond.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2009/06/03/2rpouj_silence_and_repetition Wed, 3 Jun 2009 04:50:56 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2009/06/03/2rpouj_silence_and_repetition The concept of wasted time is a lie.

La Monte Young

Morton Feldman

John Cage]]> http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2009/06/01/2rm5e4_a_group_that_i_might_create_that_would_be_about_timbre Mon, 1 Jun 2009 23:30:14 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2009/06/01/2rm5e4_a_group_that_i_might_create_that_would_be_about_timbre I had been considering starting a group called something like "we listen to timbre". There is one similar group in existence, http://www.last.fm/group/Spectral+Music, and I don't like group redundancy, but spectralism seems to describe only one form of timbre-oriented music, others including acousmatic, noise, field recordings, lowercase, eai, etc.

This journal is basically brainstorming for me, but also please comment if you're interested in such a group (you want a place to discuss timbre in music, or to share recommendations, etc.).

A short list of artists, off the top of my head, that I associate with timbre:

John Cage
Giacinto Scelsi
Gérard Grisey
Horaţiu Rădulescu
Iancu Dumitrescu
Sunn O)))
Merzbow
Francisco López

Of course there are many artists who concentrate on timbre and harmony at the same time, or create a variety of harmonic and timbral works, in addition to those who are concerned only with timbre. The group would allow for discussion of all of those artists, but more importantly about sound itself.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2009/05/03/2p55ym_oh_my_god%2C_what_kind_of_people_use_rate_your_music Sun, 3 May 2009 23:57:27 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2009/05/03/2p55ym_oh_my_god%2C_what_kind_of_people_use_rate_your_music I just found the most pathetic reviews for the recording of La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano:

http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/la_monte_young/the_well_tuned_piano_81_x_25__6_17_50___11_18_59_pm_nyc/

Regardless of their ratings, those people don't know what they're talking about. These comments are wonderfully and hilariously ignorant:

"The roots of minimalist drone can be found here"

"Who has honestly listened to this whole thing straight through besides Young himself? Anyone?"

and

"even better if you listen to all the five parts simultaneously"

I guess I should put a good review on there to sort of help people out.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2009/04/06/2mizu5_denon_ah-d2000 Mon, 6 Apr 2009 05:55:02 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2009/04/06/2mizu5_denon_ah-d2000 I just got these headphones yesterday. Wow! Wow! I love them! These are the best headphones that I've heard. I was in need of a good set of over-ear headphones. I had been doing most of my listening with Etymotic in-ears, and my other over-ear headphones are some mediocre Sennheisers. The Denons are supposed to be better with a dedicated headphone amplifier, and I don't have one of those. I thought I'd hear how they are right off of my sound card anyway. There's no problem, they sound perfect. I'm setting my volume around 10-15% of the maximum. The sound card that I have is a Creative X-Fi Titanium. Creative doesn't seem to have the best reputation, but this card is pretty much their best one, and I get really good sound out of it. I can hardly imagine getting anything better than this.

Artists that I've listened to so far with these headphones: Robert Johnson, Merzbow, Pelican, Boris, Iancu Dumitrescu, Charles Ives, Evan Parker, Jon Hassell, Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Quintet, Scott Walker

All of these have improved in their own way. The electroacoustic mixes of Yoshihide and Jon Hassell are much more clear. Merzbow's electronic noises have more detail. The strings in Ives's "The Unanswered Question" sound exactly as they should: beautiful and terrifying. I can hear the space that Evan Parker recorded in, and I don't miss a single detail of his playing. Scott Walker's voice has become strangely corporealized for me, because I can hear the small sounds made between his lips and in his mouth and throat; the other sounds in his music have more detail as well. Robert Johnson's guitar even sounds better, with the little sounds that he makes being transmitted as clearly as they ever will be.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2008/12/07/2bkfxx_the_well-tuned_piano_81x25_6%3A17%3A50_-_11%3A18%3A59_pm_nyc Sun, 7 Dec 2008 04:35:58 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2008/12/07/2bkfxx_the_well-tuned_piano_81x25_6%3A17%3A50_-_11%3A18%3A59_pm_nyc About a month ago, I bought the CD boxed set of La Monte Young's "The Well-Tuned Piano 81x25 6:17:50 - 11:18:59 PM NYC" over EBay. I hadn't heard the piece before, but I had heard a few of his pieces of drones and sustained tones, and I had read a whole lot about him. I ended up paying about $400 for it. I was expecting it to go to $500, so that was all right. I'm not wealthy, but I believed it would be worth the money, and it was.

I just listened to it for the first time today, and it was wonderful! Lately I've been using my portable digital player from Cowon for most of my listening, so I had ripped the CD's and put them on there in FLAC format like I've been doing for everything. During my listening to the piece, I took a break of about a half an hour at the point between the second and third CD's, mostly because my in-ear Etymotic earphones were kind of bothering me.

I had been planning all week to listen to the piece today, so I had been anticipating it all that time. I couldn't wait to hear it, but I was also afraid of how I would respond to the duration of it. The longest musical piece that I had listened to before was Philip Glass's "Music in Twelve Parts", which is about three and a half hours. However, I had even taken a break or two during that piece, and I'm still planning on going back for another listen sometime soon. Anyway, I'm pleased to be able to say that the five hours did not feel like too long. In fact, as the final hour was winding down, I had that feeling that I would love it if it lasted even longer. Of course, I took a break in the middle, so my attention was only tested for the three hours after the break, rather than the full five hours at once.

The music of "The Well-Tuned Piano" is wonderful and consistently beautiful. The composition consists of sections and subsections that do not come in a fixed organization. Rather, La Monte improvises during each performance to choose the sections to play, and in what order or with how many repetitions. The impression I got of the music was of waves of changing density. His playing moves between a one-note-at-a-time andante to a dense cloud of rapid key strikes, reverberations, and overtones. The dense sections were usually more enjoyable, but the calmer sections were equally welcome for all the functions they serve in mood, dynamic contrast, and modulations. A striking quality of the music is how it maintains a peaceful and meditative mood no matter how active it is. There's not really a lot of tension, but this is music of rich moods and expansive dream worlds.

Concerning the quality and timbre of the sound, I got the impression that this is what a piano should sound like. The piano had a clean ivory and wood sound, and it didn't sound stuffy or too warm. The recording sounded like I was sitting right there on the bench next to La Monte. The only detrimental sounds were the ocassional noises that got picked up, mostly from the audience--several coughs, a sneeze or two, and a few mechanical rumbles and squeaks from the building and outside.

I'm thoroughly happy with this recording and glad I gave up those $400. It's a new favorite, and I see myself in the future listening to it once or twice a year. I'm not sure whether I'll indulge in another listen sometime this winter or wait until the spring to enjoy it again. While listening to it today, I was sitting on a couch and looking at the changing lights from the Christmas tree my family had set up and another strand of lights on the wall. It was a good environment, and it seemed to me a perfectly satisfactory substitute for Marian Zazeela's "Magenta Lights". In the springtime, I want to listen to it while lying outside under a tree.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2008/10/09/27mzw3_a_van_halenmerzbow_mash-up Thu, 9 Oct 2008 08:45:48 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2008/10/09/27mzw3_a_van_halenmerzbow_mash-up Some time ago I found an mp3 of the vocal track from Van Halen's Runnin' With the Devil. So, I listened to it again and decided that it would be accompanied well by a Merzbow track. Also, I haven't even heard the Van Halen original, so all I'm familiar with is this track on which Eddie Van Halen sounds like a crazy homeless person on the street, like Wild Man Fischer or something. I mixed it with the Merzbow track Black Flesh PT.1, a short track that has chicken sounds in it.

Last.fm says the link is "spam", so, copy and remove the spaces:
www . mediafire . com/file/neewmdrzdzk/Black%20Flesh%20Pt.%201_Runnin'%20with%20the%20Devil.mp3
it's 3:49 and 7.2MB]]> http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2008/05/31/204xsf_musical_emotions_profile Sat, 31 May 2008 16:54:49 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2008/05/31/204xsf_musical_emotions_profile An advertisement for this site has been showing up here. It's www.musicalemotions.org. It promises a kind of test of your music-evoked emotions. The test asked me to listen to a piece of music that I like, or "that seems of particular emotional interest to [me]." Then I rate how much I felt various emotions from a long list.

I decided to listen to Mono's "Lost Snow". I listened two-thirds of the way through before starting to fill in my reactions. There was a space at the bottom to fill in any emotions that I felt but were not on the list, possibly for them to refine the test later. I put in "passion" and "compassion".

Following is my results page. It describes the groups of emotions that I identified most strongly.

"Your musical emotions profile

(there was a bar graph here that listed the following emotions)

General description of the various musical dimensions

Wonder: Feelings of wonder are related to experiences of admiration, enchantment, astonishment, marvel in front of anything very impressive such as the beauties of nature, of art or of more specific phenomena such as a child prodigy or a pathbreaking scientific discovery. Why music evokes this emotional response quite frequently is at present not fully understood.

Transcendence: Experiences of transcendence contain feelings of deep inspiration often combined with feelings of awe, of humility and reverence in front of something perceived as big. These experiences can, but do not have to imply spiritual feelings. As noted by the famous psychologist Abraham Maslow, music is one of the most effective means of inducing feelings of transcendence.

Longing: Is a feeling experienced in relation to something or someone that is strongly valued or desired but absent. Nostalgia tends to occur in relation past valued experiences, while longing is more typically directed towards a desired but not (yet) existing future. Longing is often experienced in relation to a loved one, but can also be “free-floating” in which case it may be best described as “the desire for desire”.

Tenderness: This is a state in which one feels soft, gentle, in “caressing mode” as it were. Feelings of tenderness are intimately related to feelings of love, affection and warmth.

Peacefulness: Reflects the experience of tranquility and serenity and the total absence of emotional turmoil. This experience relates to the well-known calming, sedative effects of music. Despite their apparent dullness, these feelings can be quite intense when experienced as a positive dreamlike state of contentment – a much sought after experience in human life.

Power: Refers to feelings of triumph, heroism, and “grandeur”. Music does have a mysterious transformative power to make us feel strong, great, and self-confident even when our day-to-day feelings tend to be fragile, dull and not empowering at all.

Joyful Activation: Feelings of joy, enthusiasm and happiness are self-explanatory and anyone who listens regularly to music knows these feelings. Sometimes these feelings mobilize our motor system and we feel like bouncing, tapping or dancing to the music. Therefore we refer to this state as joyful activation.

Inquietude: Even though most music-related feelings tend to be positive, some kinds or twists of music can trigger feelings of nervousness, agitation, irritation and even aggression. When in a rebellious state of mind, these feelings can be sought after or even enjoyed as tends to happen particularly during adolescence.

Sadness: The sadness evoked by music tends to differ from the sadness of our day-to day experiences. The latter tend to be aversive – something we wish we could avoid. In contrast, the sadness evoked by music is one that, on balance, we are able to enjoy. It is as if the music allowed us to experience the pure feeling of sadness, stripped from the aversive experiences of defeat or loss that accompany its appearance in everyday-life."

I found interesting the descriptions of how we experience these emotions during music. There's not much more to the results than that, however. What would also be interesting would be a look into the differences among people in how they react to music and describe their emotions. To what extent to we differ in what emotions we prefer to feel during music? How much do people vary in the emotions they experience from the same piece of music? How much of that variation would be attributable to different ways of putting words to the emotions? Etc.

I recommend the test even though the results may be lacking in insight. I'm especially interested in other people's results.

]]> http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2008/05/26/1zv4im_reward_is_related_to_effort. Mon, 26 May 2008 14:51:06 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/handmeups/journal/2008/05/26/1zv4im_reward_is_related_to_effort. You listen to music. You love music. You're open-minded. You don't like something just because it's popular. You put some effort into finding music that you like. You "listen" to music. You're lazy.

How do you listen to music? Do you remove distractions, start an album, and listen to it? Or do you put something on while you're on the internet or writing your philosophy midterm? A little of both? From now on, you're not going to do the second one, you're only going to listen to music without trying to do multiple things at the same time. Because I said so. . .but here are my reasons:

You can't focus on more than one thing at a time. If we try to multi-task, we are only shifting our attention back-and-forth between the tasks. That means something for how you perceive music. If this is how you listen, it's good that you're favorite songs repeat the chorus three times, isn't it? It's okay if you miss it the second time, because you already know the melody anyway.

If you are distracted, you miss something. Music organizes time, and it does it constantly. If you listen to a CD (that's right, an actual plastic CD you paid money for), there is something new 44,100 times a second. That's a lot more than your brain has the ability to consciously recognize, but they all contribute to a dense sound with some duration, that, if you have some decent speakers (or headphones, for those of you who like to imagine that Thom Yorke is singing from inside of your skull), will correspond with what the artist intended you to hear. To get to the point, the artist (although not every "artist") did not record their music with the intention that you would listen to about half of it, your attention snapping in and out.

If an artist respects himself, and his (her/their/whatever) fans, to such an extreme that he assumes that most of them will listen, at least once, maybe twice, with their undivided attention, then he has the opportunity to not have to make his music more "accessible". Compare to the shit on the radio. Radio is usually heard (not listened to) while the audience is doing some other activity. So, if you are an artist who wants to get his music on the radio, you're going to have to take it easy on your listeners. They're not really listening.

Now you know that you're supposed to listen to music to enjoy it. Okay, big deal. Here's the hard part: Listening takes effort. "No, it doesn't, you said all I have to do is not be distracted, then how am I not going to listen?", you say (that's what you just thought, right?)? Well, it takes effort to focus your attention on the sound (music is just sound, in case you didn't know) to the exclusion of distractions, such as, possibly most significantly, your thoughts. "Well, if I don't have to think, then listening shouldn't take much effort." Try not to think. Now start thinking again. That didn't work, did it? "No, and if I stop thinking, how will I ever start again?" That's a good point, but you'll get bored when the music is over, trust me. There were Zen monks who supposedly meditated for days at a time, but even they had to quit at some point so that they wouldn't starve to death.

Because it takes some effort to quiet your thoughts and focus on one experience, here's how you are rewarded for that effort: you will appreciate (not necessarily enjoy, i know) new music. I don't just mean that other band you heard of that's similar to the one you already know, but anything that you have the opportunity to hear. Appreciation makes you learn new things and have broader experiences, which can lead to deeper experiences than you have had before.

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