Mutek's Acclaimed Panel Discussions Continue  ¶ 2:10 PM

  removing Word's horizontal line >!< there's nothing peskier than software that automatically does things for you and then doesn't make it clear how to undo such things. revisions, revisions.  ¶ 3:56 PM

 
a week or so of final revisions to go.. and then i can have my dissertation bound. the end is in sight.  ¶ 2:15 PM

  the lure of tv is even stronger w/o commercials. unfortunately a week ago the bittorrent site i often used was shut down. here's an article detailing the mpaa's recent lawsuits against six bittorrent tv sites. there are still other sites, but it may get increasingly difficult (and time consuming) to find torrents. network stuff i can easily record and ff through the commercials, but the one cable show i watch isn't worth $25/month. i don't understand why the cable/satellite business can't implement a pay as you watch plan for some of the basic channels. the same goes for satellite radio and various net subscription models. in package deals you always pay for something that you don't need... and you can't possibly subscribe to every service. why not just put ALL content up and you pay a fee according to bandwidth?  ¶ 9:45 PM

  Barney Childs interviewing Charles Wuorinen 1962:
Childs: Does a bad review disturb you?
Wourinen: Certainly, in the sense that one would rather be complimented than criticized. But certainly not because one could ever take seriously something a critic said. They're just too stupid for that.
  ¶ 10:36 AM

  the last few to several years the debate over "laptop music" and how it can be rather dull to watch keeps emerging. Richard Maxfield addressed the issue over 40 years ago as such:
"It seems to me that pure electronic music is self-sufficient as an art form without any visual added attractions or distractions. I view as irrelevent the repetitious sawing on strings and baton wielding spectacle we focus our eyes upon during a conventional concert." from the essay "Music, Electronic and Performed" 1963  ¶ 10:19 AM

  letter from the 1970s:
Gentlemen: I have a story that may be of interest to you. It is not widely known who invented the circuitry concept for the automatic sequential performance of musical pitches - now well known as a sequencer. I, however, do know who the inventor was - for it was I who first conceived and built the sequencer. Bob Moog, who visited me occasionally at my lab on Long Island, was among the first to see and witness the performance of my UJT-Relay sequencer. To digress for a bit: I was so secretive about my development activities - perhaps neurotically so - that I was always reminding Bob that he mustn't copy or reveal my sequencer work to anyone. I understand, now, my personal need for secrecy at that time. Electronic music for commercials and films was my living then - and I thought I had this great advantage - because of my sequencer. Word naturally got around about the nature of what my device accomplished, but Bob Moog continued to be loyal. I must say Bob Moog is a most honorable person. He steadfastly refrained from embodying my sequencer in his equipment line until the sheer pressure of so many manufacturers using the sequencer forced him to compete. Yet, he used the simplest version, though he knew about my most advanced sequencer. Quite a gentleman, and a super talent besides. Now, with the passing of years, I guess I regret my secrecy and would like for people to know of what I accomplished. -Raymond Scott  ¶ 2:09 PM

 
speaking of Caribou, The Milk of Human Kindness is truly grand. i'm a fan momentarily.  ¶ 10:42 PM

  "If you’re in a room with two guitars, a bass and drums you’re probably only going to think of things within a certain restrained set of ideas. [If] you’ve got all these records and you’re like, ‘I wonder if this is any good,’ there are likely more weird influences going to end up in there, and I like that. Different production sounds and different instrumentation." -Dan Snaith/Caribou & Manitoba  ¶ 2:10 PM

  a hilarious exchange from five? years ago in the letters section of the wire... archived nicely in the blog An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming.  ¶ 10:37 AM

  from the book Four Musical Minimalists: "...all four composers shared with Cage and other experimentalists the belief that their music should somehow go beyond what their own imaginations were inherently capable of inventing." i'm not really into minimalism (especially from a structural standpoint), but i find some of the ideas behind it paralleling my own.  ¶ 2:29 PM

  Forbes reports on ClearPlay and the possibility of other types of filters that could essentially "remix" a dvd. it probably isn't that easy, though, to get access to the codes etc. that create these filters.  ¶ 10:58 AM

  a fabulous review of Oh Astro's Hello World in Splendid. the realaudio clip, though, is really mushy sounding.  ¶ 4:06 PM

  Christopher DeLaurenti's column The Score, which appears in Seattles' weekly The Stranger, most recently starts off with a paragraph on Megalomanic: "I'm still too baffled by P. Miles Bryson's Megalomaniac Decorator's Quarterly (Illegal Art) to declare it Album of the Year, but it's a shoo-in for Album Title of the Year. Bryson plunders the archly hip lifestyle music of the 1960s-bossa nova, Herb Alpert, cop-show jazz (including a sliver of Hawaii Five-O), spy movie soundtracks--and whips it into a whirlwind satire of pop music conventions. Sudden swells in volume, jarring, needle-drop additions to the mix (fisticuffs, groaned lyrics to "The Girl from Ipanema"), and surprising split-second audio dropouts make for adventurous and fun listening."  ¶ 3:04 PM