So, while I was waiting to finish downloading tracks to do a remix over on Acid Planet, I decided to read through the contests full rules, legalese and all. That’s when I found this. Even if it’s not the best sentence in the world, the bold part has to be the best phrase:
You hereby grant, sell, transfer, assign and convey to the applicable Publisher, its successors and assigns, all present and future right, title and interest of every kind and nature whatsoever, including, without limitation, all copyrights, all music and music publishing rights, and all rights incidental, subsidiary, ancillary or allied thereto (including, without limitation, all derivative rights) in and to the Contest Submissions for exploitation throughout the universe, in perpetuity, by means of any and all media and devices whether now known or hereafter devised.
I decided to have a shot at writing something Minimalist myself. Now, I don’t feel that I could ever listen primarily to Minimalist music, or that many people could do so and be happy. I have, at times, thought it was incredibly boring. That said, I decided to commit myself to it and disregard my own criticical feelings for an evening.
Like most musical movements, genres and styles, Minimalism cannot be defined in black and white terms. The understanding of the concept from which I worked is this: The Western music tradition is an epic of cluttering up good, simple music ideas with a lot of extraneous ornamentation. So, I attempted to write a piece of music that embodies what I’ve been working on as Longing for Orpheus, stripped bare of ornamentation. There are no counter-melodies. There aren’t really any melodies. The whole point of “Orpheus, Briefly” is to move from a static a7 to an interplay between that chord and an Fmaj7.
To reflect the World Music influence of Longing for Orpheus, I included a quiet 1-bar hand drum pattern in the background, with accents every 4th bar. It never changes.
Longing for Orpheus makes heavy use of reverb, so there is reverb on the synthesizer line of “Orphic, Briefly.” What I did not anticipate is that the changes in the level of reverb that I programmed in over the course of the song are the most interesting part of the song. Until the very end, the changes are subtle, and you never would have heard them in a more complex soundscape. I think this kind of thing is what the creators of Minimalism found so intriguing about extreme simplicity, and I can understand why.
It’s true – Internet Exploder is a lame browser. It can’t handle padding values in % form – I think it treats them as percentages of its maximum potential width, rather than of the parent element. As long as I had them in my style-sheet, IE was opening my page at a ridiculously large width.
I also discovered that Explorer cares about whitespace where it shouldn’t. This:
<tr><td><a target=”_self” xhref=”http://www.orphicmusic.com/AE/supported.php”> < img xsrc=”http://www.orphicmusic.com/AE/T/AEmenu4.gif” alt=”Supported Artists” border=”0″ /></a></td></tr>
should do the EXACT SAME THING as this:
<tr><td>
<a target=”_self” xhref=”http://www.orphicmusic.com/AE/supported.php”>
< img src=”http://www.orphicmusic.com/AE/T/AEmenu4.gif” alt=”Supported Artists” border=”0″ />
</a>
</td></tr>
But no, the second one would be too easy to read! So, Explorer puts about 3 vertical pixels of space at the bottom of the image, forcing you to use the hard-to-follow first version if you want your page to look good.
Explorer also has bad breath.
On the other hand, I’m so very happy that the world has Gimp. It takes some time to figure out how things work, but it’s !FREE! and you can do a whole lot with it.
This is all fallout from the latest revamp of my Nu Ambient review site.
Oh, in case you’re wondering, Wampage = Rampage + Webpage .
I have sung in high school choirs and musicals. I have sung in college choirs, small and large. I have sung in the chorus of a number of community operettas. Now, I’m singing in a community choir.
I have never sung in a choir where everyone arrived on time. I have never sung in a choir that sat quietly and attentively after the director’s cut-off.
Directors must be meant to suffer.
One of the more recent movements in the Classical music world is Minimalism. You can find a thorough introduction to the concept here, but my understanding of the basic idea is this:
The Western musical tradition is nothing more than the evolution of meaningless ornamentation – the best way to express musical ideas is a few at a time, and you should take the time to appreciate them.
I haven’t really listened to much of this music, but The Photographer is a fine example. Its composer is Philip Glass, probably the most well-known composer in this style. If you’ve seen The Illusionist, Secret Window, The Hours, or The Truman Show, you’ve heard his music (though these are mostly in Post-Minimalist or other styles).
What I find really interesting is that Trance music works on the same principle, though it hasn’t been as thoroughly defined or debated. There have been many recent offshoots of Trance that are more song-oriented (which kind of parallels the evolution of Post-Minimalism from Minimalism), but the original Trance that came into its own during the early-mid 90’s relied on the extended repetition of a few musical lines, which slowly evolved over the course of the song. Ishkur’s guide has plenty of examples.
