John Cage Archives • 8Sided Blog

Kosmiche Clicky Keyboard

August 6, 2020 · 2 Comments

I’ve got a few quickies for you and then some music news.

First, I’ve officially entered the clicky keyboard club. Mechanical keyboards have tempted me for years, and this Kickstarter campaign finally inspired me to take the plunge. My Keychron K8 arrived today, and this post is pretty much the first thing I’ve typed on it. I’m doing a lot of writing and thought a more physical keyboard — with clicks and noise! — would help inspire and lead me frequently into ‘the zone.’ It’s too early to say. I’ve heard some people can’t get used to these keyboards, and it is larger in height than I’m used to. I’m using a palm rest, which helps, but it’s still going to take effort to get acclimated. But so far, so good — the feel is impressively tactile, and I love the keys’ noise. The fancy backlighting makes typing feel special, too. I’ll report back once I get some serious use out of this thing.

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Here’s a fun piece about John Cage’s expertise with edible mushrooms. Well — he was an expert most of the time as there’s that dinner where he unintentionally poisoned his guests. If you know about Cage but didn’t know about his mushroom obsession, then you’ll find this paragraph fascinating:

In one particularly famous episode, in February 1959, Cage appeared on the Italian television program Lascia o Raddoppio (Double or Nothing) and won five million lire (something like eight thousand dollars) by being able to name 24 white-spored agarics — edible mushrooms — that were mentioned in the Studies of American Fungi field guide. Cage listed them in alphabetical order and then bought a Volkswagen bus for his partner, choreographer Merce Cunningham, and a piano for his home in Stony Point.

There’s a new two-volume book — John Cage: A Mycological Foray — that details Cage’s mad mushroom skills though his writing and essays by others. It looks lovely.

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Speaking of lovely-looking books, Craig Mod — who might be responsible for my favorite email newsletter — has self-published a book based on his incredible Eater article, I Walked 600 Miles Across Japan for Pizza Toast. I know the title of that article is baffling but, seriously, give it a read if you haven’t. This new book is titled Kissa by Kissa, and it expands on the article with lots of new graphics, photographs, and text. It’s obviously a labor of love and looks fantastic. Even more fantastic, Craig coded his Kickstarter-style platform to raise money and sell it from (he jokingly calls it ‘Craigstarter’). It’s open-source and downloadable from Github. Labels and recording artists take note — you could use this to do a PledgeMusic (ugh) style fundraiser for your next album right from your site. (Update: I see the book sold out. Congratulations to Craig! I imagine it will be online in some form in the future, like his ‘digital book’ Ise-ji: Walk With Me.)

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Brian Eno. Laurie Anderson. Nitin Sawhney. Simon McBurney. These four brains got together (on Zoom) and had a conversation about listening. It’s terrific. And Eno’s lockdown beard is impressive.

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My bit of music news is about Gemini Revolution. The brothers Dedric and Delaney — from the cool Kansas City combo Monta At Odds — lead this project. We call Gemini Revolution their ‘alternate timeline band.’ I’ve just released their rad new album Supernova Remnant on the 8D Industries label. Earlier today, I described this album to a friend as “kosmiche-styled space jams, ambient builders, and textured dream-droppers.” I won’t back down from that description. Have a listen in the player below, and if it strikes your fancy — it should! — then please head down to Bandcamp where the album is downloadable at the special price of ‘name your price.’

Tiny Accidents

March 10, 2020 · 1 Comment

A useful skill in songwriting is the subtle deployment of the unexpected. When there’s a sudden chord change out of nowhere, a melody that rises when you think it should fall, a strange production effect that changes the tone of the song — these surprises generate listener goosebumps. My favorite: when the bass line in The Feelies’ “Slow Down,” which is a constant single note for most of the song, changes to a second note at 2:19. There’s nothing to this — it’s so simple — but it gets me every time.

The trick is that these surprises can’t be too surprising. Sure, in compositions aiming to unmoor the listener (often in experimental music) the surprises are abrupt and heavy. But I think there’s a higher art in subtlety — sonic and compositional changes that are unexpected but not necessarily out of place. Sometimes these sound like accidents, but tiny ones.

Occasionally these surprises or imperfections are genuinely accidental. Think about a singer whose voice cracks mid-phrase, or a botched note in a guitar riff, or a tape delay echo tail that gets a little too out of control. In the podcast series and accompanying book Ways of Hearing, Damon Krukowski mentions his imperfect drumming in recordings by the band Galaxie 500. “We played as steadily as we could,” he says. “But this was a performance. We were nervous and excited. And we sped up at the chorus.”

Sometimes these flaws are unwelcome and distracting. In Galaxie 500’s day, an inexcusable mistake would mean recording a new take of the song. Other times these unplanned incidents are at the edge of unacceptable — such as speeding up in the chorus — and it’s more trouble than it’s worth to re-record. So they get left alone. And, a lot of times, these strange little errors grow to become favorite song moments for both the listeners and the artists.

Now, instead of re-recording, one can ‘fix it in the mix.’ A quantization or manual shifting of beats in the DAW can correct that excited drummer. A singer can choose from multiple takes of a vocal line to replace that bit where her voice cracked for a second. The tape delay is an automated plug-in, so there’s no chance of that echo getting distorted and out-of-bounds.

By nature (or un-nature), digital production provides fewer opportunities for accidents. If a musician or producer wants to incorporate the unexpected in a song, she must program the error into the digital tool. There are now plug-ins and scripts that feature options to randomize settings. One can get carried away — check out the lengths Brian Eno goes to in randomizing Logic Pro:

We commonly refer to these fortunate misfortunes as ‘happy accidents.’ And, outside of software, one can encourage these detours in the analog world. Artists often purposefully set up loose creative environments to inspire a moment of chance. Musicians jam or improvise to see what happens, hoping for a phrase of synergy to develop into a previously unimagined song. Guitarists might try alternate tunings, or drummers might play on unfamiliar percussion set-ups. Even recording in strange surroundings could inspire different outcomes.

There are also creative games. I mentioned Gysin and Burroughs’ The Third Mind in an episode of my email newsletter . The cut-up method detailed in that book is used by a number of artists to summon unforeseen creative options. Here’s a video of David Bowie using the cut-up method. Other examples of creative games are Peter Schmidt and Brian Eno’s well-known Oblique Strategies cards (even used by country music superstars) or John Cage composing “Music For Changes” using the I Ching.

At the beginning of last year, I tried my own creative game project. Before starting a song, I set up a bunch of rules to output random results. These rules covered the sounds I’d use, the tempo, the audio plug-ins, even the song’s title. The project was short-lived but inspired the process of creating the ‘theme songs’ for my newsletter. And I had a name for that project, which I also use to describe the ‘unexpected but not out-of-place’: Tiny Accidents.

In my experience, these accidents are valuable creative exercises. They allow artists to step outside of their heads and develop works that wouldn’t exist otherwise. Each throw of the dice is a chance to learn new techniques by outwitting artistic obstacles. The process is incredibly satisfying. So, I’m resuming my Tiny Accidents practice. And I challenge you to start one.

This post was adapted from Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care, a weekly newsletter loosely about music-making, music-listening, and how technology changes the culture around those things. Click here to check out the latest issue and subscribe.

Commodifying Coziness and the Rise of Chill-Out Capitalism

March 2, 2020 · Leave a Comment

In the article Why Are So Many Brands Pivoting To Coziness?, Vox’s Rebecca Jennings reveals a curious marketing trend: brands displaying promises of comfort to attract millennials and Gen Z’ers. In youth-oriented magazine advertisements, we’re used to photos of adventurous consumers climbing mountains or traversing an exotic, unfamiliar city. Now you’re as likely to see a picture of someone sitting at home seated on a couch or maybe even — gasp! — reading a book. Combined with emerging products like weighted blankets and CBD shampoo, it’s evident that chill is ‘in.’

Media theorists point out that horror movies are popular during times of unease and distrust in society. Jennings has a similar reason for the rise of coziness: “Things are bad, and people are anxious about whatever ongoing horrors are metabolizing in geopolitics, the environment, and capitalism.” However, there’s an always-online twist to this movement. “The selling point is that this product will make you feel calm and safe, but the experience of using it is still supposed to look good enough for other people to see.”

Ambient music isn’t exactly mainstream, but it’s more in vogue — and pervasive — than it’s ever been. The flavors are varied, from dark drones to nature noises, from New Age throwbacks to chill-hop YouTube streams. If we’re defining ambient music as music that sits in the ambiance, politely ignored as we go about our lives, then all of those styles qualify. And, like brand-marketed coziness, the music is often pushed as an antidote for a hectic life. There’s something spacey and unobtrusive playing in the background as that person sits on the couch reading his book.

Streaming has enabled an even more utilitarian strain of ambient music, something that The Baffler’s Liz Pelly refers to as “emotional wallpaper” and “music that strategically requires no attention at all.” This music is made to fall into playlists that play on repeat as we study, or meditate, or slowly fall asleep. The primary purpose isn’t to calm our brains but to rack up Spotify plays as the playlists churn in repetition. Ambient music is perfect for this — we can only listen to the same pop hook so many times. An ambient drone might as well be endless.

Of course, music has always had calming and self-healing properties. That’s ancient history. And it’s untrue to say that ‘western’ music ignored this aspect, with blues and — of course — gospel as examples of genres containing elements of spiritual remedy. But the connection came as a surprise to many of ambient music’s forerunners. Take John Cage, whose life and direction changed after a conversation with Indian composer Gita Sarabhai in the 1940s. She pointed out that it’s okay for music to be meaningless, to exist solely to “sober and quiet the mind.” It makes sense to us. But this was a revelation for Cage, a stone thrown in the pond with ripples continuing outward.

What’s new is our era’s odd commoditization of relaxation music. Sure, the New Age genre was a small phenomenon in the late ’80s — those Windham Hill CDs flew off the shelves at the Camelot Music I worked at as a teenager. But playlists targeted to sleeping ‘listeners’ for money-making purposes is a bizarre twist. Consider the Sony-affiliated Sleep & Mindfulness Thunderstorms playlist, featuring 990 one-minute tracks containing sounds of rainstorms. Why a single minute each in length? Because Spotify will deliver a micropayment to a track that plays for at least 30 seconds.

But let’s get something straight. Personally, I love ambient music. I work to it. I relax to it. I sometimes sleep to it. And, if you can’t tell, I’m fascinated by it. That presents a quandary as I’m using the music in the same way as those studying to ChilledCow’s YouTube channel. What makes my cozy space so sacred?

Simon Reynolds’ recent Resident Advisor long-read about the state of ambient music is worth a look. He grapples with chill-out capitalism in his article, stating:

Still, there is something unnerving about the idea of ambient and New Age music uncoupled from any higher purposes and applied to the task of self-repair. Like power yoga or microdosing, it is taking an agent of change that was originally part of a culture of liberation and discovery, and putting it in service of the status quo. As David Toop, author of ambient bible Ocean Of Sound, wrote recently, “if ambient music only serves as an app to incentivise or a backdrop to productivity, networking and self-realisation, then it has no story of its own, no story worth hearing.”

Are we adding too much baggage to ambient music? Perhaps it’s just meant to be, like a soothing wallpaper hue or the bird sounds outside my window. Burdening this music with a special purpose or the responsibility of solace might be self-defeating. But, true enough, so is placing a profit incentive on our coziness.