Musical Ramblings

1. I found myself in Crookes on my bicycle after running some errands (I live in Sheffield, England).  As I'd already gained so much altitude I thought I may as well go out into the Peak District and use the moors like a ring road and come home that way.  There's a number of questions I need to answer about DiftW narrative events taking place on moors so I hoped that I'd get some answers out in the countryside.

Instead, I found myself meditating on two phrases:
"[Music is] the texturization of the deliquescence of time" (Jason Martineau, The Elements of Music) and
"Music is Rotted One Note" (the title of a Squarepusher album; I assume this is an allusion to the Miles Davis-style modal approach used on the album - for example, you could say that the dorian or locrian modes were rotted one note from the major/ionian).

I recently did a show with my Ibly Dy project.  I have always described Ibly Dy as "apocalyptic" but I had begun to think about what that meant in physical rather than emotional and philosophical terms.  After the end of time; what would music sound like?  How can you have a music without time?  I sat down and tried to make the sounds that I thought would be an appropriate approximation for this idea, and then I realised that I was trying to make the sound of static on a drum kit.  Which is highly appropriate as when we listen to sounds from before the beginning of time (for example radio signals from the big bang) we hear static.  I tried to communicate all of this on stage.  The performance met with limited success.

It is clear to me that music and time are related but are different orders of the same system.  How might we relate these two orders using calculus?  I think this is a reasonable approach to take as a thought experiment, although I have a list of reservations it would probably never lead to anything mathematically useable.  I've sat down with a pen and some equations and things feel promising but I can't define my terms successfully.  This needs more work, but not today.

2. Last night I did some work with my classic rock band Firegarden.  We rehearsed some things that needed tightening up performance-wise.  Then we talked about the songs.  I think it's reasonable to say that the three or four songs we wrote immediately after the last line-up change aren't up to scratch.  We were too keen to move on quickly and no one really knew how the balance, the ebb and flow of things, would work.  Recently Jake has bought some great tunes to the band, and we've worked them up very successfully.  But I am worried that they could have been more successful had I felt more secure and hadn't had to defend my opinion at every turn.  I think one of my greatest skills (whether musically or with the DIftW or in any other context) is as an arranger.  I've got a very quick and accurate taste when it comes to the detail of constructing pieces, and 90% of the time when decisions go against my gut reaction there comes a consensus a few months down the line that I was actually right (the other 10% of the time I make mistakes).

I am also worried that it is only Jake who brings material to the table.  Back in the day every member contributed raw ingredients (mine were largely and correctly ignored).  When you have two or three writers you get the magical situation of competition which allows only the best to get through.  Without that you're left scrabbling around using every scrap of idea the sole writer can come up with.  I think that applies especially in a band situation where there's a few guys standing around in a room expectantly waiting for a riff, but it probably isn't a problem with writing a novel because you don't have that social and performance-emotional pressure.