rpm 2010

Yo friends, check it out.

The RPM Challenge is simple:
Record an album in 28 days, just be cause you can.
That's 10 songs or 35 minutes of original material
recorded during the month of February.

I'm this close to signing up.

Pleasure is Insurrectionary

Terrance Real, from The New Rules of Marriage, pg. 247:

In our culture, pleasure remains highly suspect. Like connection itself, pleasure is fine in measured, "appropriate" doses, so long as it doesn't interfere with the real work of production and caretaking. But the enforcers of the social order have always understood that pleasure is not a very docile or obedient force. Pleasure is hard to corral and hard to resist. What would happen if our young men, like Ferdinand the bull in the famous children's story, suddenly cared more about smelling the flowers than about donning their suits and briefcases to enter the ring? What if our young women were to care more about exploring variations of sexual pleasure than about marriage, fidelity, and children? Western society has always understood that pleasure is by its nature insurrectionary.

We don't take pleasure in one another and we don't give pleasure to one another nearly as much as we could because, as a culture, we simply don't much value it.

Quit Yr Job Day

By th way, in case you haven't heard:

Every day is Quit Yr Job Day!

& I happened to celebrate it last Thursday by doing just that!

Yay!

diadwtm

"Democracy" means
rule by th loudest,
rule by th sneakiest,
rule by th best organized.

Those who call our present system unjust
& continue to talk about "democracy"
might consider that th birthplace of "democracy"
was a war-happy patriarchal slave-economy.
It worked for them & it works for us.

I don't know if it's possible to separate "democracy"
from oppression by th "majority"
& influence by th propagandists,
who succeed in getting masses of people
to vote against their own interests every time.
If it is possible, it is only possible if we call it out -
name it - & design against it:

"This is happening - our system makes this happen.
If we want a different thing to happen,
we need to design a different system."

Democracy is a dirty word to me.

upcoming: oddmusic covergence dec '09

You’re invited to attend, as performer or audience

ODDMUSIC CONVERGENCE DECEMBER ‘09

“metablues, microtones, contraptions, utopia”

on Monday, December 14, at 7:30 p.m.

in the main space of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center.

$5-10, no one turned away for lack of funds.





a concert featuring responses to invitations:

0. ODDMUSIC - What is Oddmusic? Show us.
1. METABLUES - Write a “blues” song which points, instead of at old problems framed in th old language, new problems which demand a new language.
2. MICROTONES - Write a piece in an odd tuning (one which is non-redundant with conventional wisdom).
3. CONTRAPTIONS – Write a piece for an odd instrument (or a not-so-odd instrument played in an odd way).
4. UTOPIA – Write a piece which speaks of alternatives not yet possible in the current system. For example, a false statement bulletin.

Some performances are already in the works which play with these invitations. We invite you to add more! This Convergence will have something of an Open Mic element to it; if you have a piece, or can put together a piece, which attempts to respond to these invitations, please bring it and share it! Surprise us with your own metablues, microtones, contraptions, or utopias.

If you want assistance making a piece happen, get in touch!

Next Sunday, December 13, the day before the Convergence, we’re holding Office Hours as usual in th Oddmusic Oddstrumentarium (room 21A of the IMC). We’ll be working on pieces then, and welcome your participation in that. Bring an interest, and we’ll work on something together!

Music is ours to odd. Odd is ours to music.

Much love, Andrew

pivot

I call something a "Pivot" when:

A & C alone contradict one another.
B contradicts neither A nor C.
A composed sequence A-B-C resolves th contradiction
since th composed sequence is neither A nor B nor C, but instead
a context in which th three can live
(a different logical type): X.

How to practice pivots?

2 Brünish somethings

2 related somethings written by Herbert Brün that I want to keep around.

First, from th program notes of his String Quartet No. 3:

If played and heard often enough, every musical gesture is prone to be interpreted, by musicians and listeners, as a gesture of musical speech. As the gesture becomes familiar, and thus recognized by society, the composed structure, in which the context generates the meaning of its components, will be misunderstood, instead, as one in which the components give meaning to their context.

In order to retard this development, this visitation of communicative familiarity, for as long as possible, I have attempted, in several of my compositions, to anticipate the gesture-forming tendencies within the composed structure and to reduce each of them ad absurdum by way of a non sequitur. I wanted, thereby, to rob trivial perception and partial recognition of the paralyzing effect that all too commonly is mistaken for understanding of music.

Th second, from My Words And Where I Want Them, #247:

Composition generates whole systems so that there be a context which can endow trivial 'items' and meaningless 'materials' with a sense and a meaning never before associated with either items or materials.

Be it linguistic art, where the sentence injects meaningful intent into mere lexicographic vocables, thus turning these into words-

be it visual art, where the configuration injects meaningful intent into mere perceptible data, thus turning these into spaces, shapes, movements and colorpatterns-

be it audible art, where the structuring of time and distance injects meaningful intent into mere acoustical phenomena, thus turning these into musical events-

sooner or later both the profiteering interpreters and the consuming audience will perversely deny the composers' competence and, instead, declare the sentence to be meant by its words, the painting to be meant by its components, and the music to be meant by its sounds.

In order to retard this unfortunate and inevitable decay (too many humans are indistinguishable from laws of nature) for as long as possible, I have contrived to inhibit such gesture forming tendencies in most of my compositions by using many a non sequitur as a structural leap over new gaps avoiding old bridges.

The intent is motivated by my non-malicious desire to keep not only my music as alienated as possible from 'business as usual' and to have not only my composition say something to the interpreter and the listener for the longer time than it may take them to just repeat their habitual commonplaces to themselves.

The survival of composition depends on the composer's art: anticommunication.

economic think(ing out loud)

Different people paying th same number of dollars does not mean different people paying th same value.

My $20 is, to me, a different value than your $20 is to you.

What would a proportional currency look like? Instead of "everyone has to pay th same dollars" it might go, "everyone has to pay th same proportion". Then, 20 proportional units ("poops," say) for me & 20 poops for you are, to each of us, th same value (more or less), but a different number of dollars.

In effect, each person would have her own currency which would convert to dollars at a different rate.

This assumes we develop a "fair" way of determining th "value" of $20 for each person.

What about th "value" of stuff for th seller? If I charge 20 poops for a candy bar, then some folks would spend more dollars than others on th candy bar (because of th different dollars to poops rates). If I'm selling a candy bar & I want more dollars, I'd try to attract th folks whose poops are worth more dollars.

But why would someone want more dollars? If I find a way to make more dollars, my poops are worth less.

If we had poops (& we cared about fair distribution of power), we wouldn't need dollars at all. Poops could cancel out th power of dollars entirely.

Maybe a proportional currency could exist alongside standard currency, added to th current economy for ease of sliding-scale-type transactions. If it were made easy for people to charge proportional prices instead of standard prices, I wonder if they would do it.

Another can of worms: organizations that function as people. Companies, corporations, non-profits, unions, committees, political parties. Do they get poop rates? Can a small business spend fewer dollars than a large business, but th same number of poops? Where do I stand next to X-mart, when we're competing to buy a thing?

Maybe dollars & poops are in contradiction. Yes, I think they are, & for th contradiction to get resolved, we need a different system.