Here is my most recent composition Beleaguered Castle

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=12619377

Beleaguered Castle is named after a secret government project in the movie Source Code where a soldier who had been turned into a quadriplegic vegetable could be spoken with only through a connection to his mind. His cognitive experience could be inserted into the memories of a freshly dead bomb victim whose brain cells were still somewhat alive so a second, worse bombing could be stopped by finding out who the bomber was.

He wakes up inside the memory of the bomb victim’s body on the train before the first bomb goes off. Each time he is unsuccessful to find out who the bomber was, the bomb explodes and he wakes up from operating inside the dead man’s memory but doesn’t wake up to our state of existence.

Beleaguered Castle can mean the soldier’s broken body, my own or your aging body, but also our beleaguered government, the environment, our broken families, or a castle after a siege.

This is an example of a double frame which is a late postmodern technique used in the arts, literature and film. The movie Cloud Atlas is another example and there are several others.

I was inspired to create a composition named after technology in science fiction because the synth guitarist Alan Holdsworth named one of his pieces “Atavachron,” which is the machine from an episode in the original Star Trek series where Spock and McCoy were forced by its “librarian” into a frozen world which was also in the time milleniums earlier than their own time.

The intro is taken from the last section of music. I had originally planned to use the end of the bridge for the intro, which is my normal way of working, but I have always composed bridges that bring the energy down for contrast.

I was moved to avoid an intro that brings the energy down from what a female sumo wrestler said in an interview on TV about how to win when you’re not as heavy as your opponent. Come in low. Hit hard and fast. Plus, in order to be able to turn your strength and speed into power you must also be flexible. I have to be flexible and not just work unconsciously creating low energy intros for every composition.

The intro features the bass playing off the beat from the 16th note figure which is played a half step apart by rhythm guitar and piano. Playing off the beat is the rhythmic way of being similar to playing a half step apart giving an unconscious relationship.

The first A section starts with a motif and creates variations of that motif in this order; truncate, reorder, substitute, rhythmic variation, shift of rhythmic emphasis, revoice, extend. Using many variation procedures like this comes from Totalism.

The key is Lydian Dominant #5 which is basically a whole tone scale with a chromatic pitch between scales steps 5 and 6, creating a 7 note scale. This denies the normally accepted possible key.

The motive variations are presented in a repetition scheme taken from a numeric series in mathematics which is the answer to a complex equation. The series is 11212312341432154325614325671234. Notice how it gives you the 1 and the 2 before give you the 3 etc…

I chose it to experiment with non-traditional ways of developing the music. All variations of the motive are presented as non-3rd arpeggios on the chord root (and tonic) of the piece “C.”

Remember I used non-progressing motives in my piece “Dune Cascade” that went aaab aabb abbb aabb aaab, and a ab abc abcd abc ab. Although 1121231234…develops, it still feels very static with all the variations presented on “C.”

At first, the chords on the piano repeatedly hammer out only the voicing C F# G# A (This denies the normally accepted chord voicings.) where there are rests in the motive series (from the procedure of subtraction performed on the motive series.) This chord doesn’t progress at all except for some neighbor chords that get put in towards the end of the A section and in the B section.

Later, I experiment with making the chords built on chord root C to “progress” on each repeat by making the chords more and more complex, undermining the normal idea of what we think of as a chord progression.

First, 4 note voicings, then 5 note extensions and alterations, then two kinds of 9’s; flat nine with natural nine, natural nine with sharp nine, sharp eleven with natural eleven, flat five with natural five, sharp five with natural five, flat thirteen with natural thirteen, sharp thirteen with natural thirteen.

Then, combinations of these.

Most of these ideas came from composer John Adams. The idea of non-progressing chords was mine. I also came up with the C/bridge having the chords go out of phase with everything else while everything also slows down.

Though I don’t know of any examples, I suspect increasingly complex chords and a dual rhythmic frame has already been done by others, but I’m still happy I don’t just copy John Adams and can come up with things by myself.

The form of the pieces goes ABABCABDEF as per salsa and some progressive rock.

The first repeat of the “A” section creates a dialogue using the motive series changing between the rhythm guitar and the right hand of the piano. The interaction comes more and more frequent.

The first repeat of B finds the chords moved to another instrument. The C section dispenses with the motive scheme temporarily and puts repeated chords in the rhythm guitar which slowly goes out of phase while the whole section also slows down both of which deny the beat. This is one example of a double frame in music.

The violin also plays more and more flat denying the tuning.
The second repeat of A extends each of the motives by continuing the same intervals beyond the end of each motive variation; TT, Whole step, Half step. The number of intervals beyond the top note of each arpeggio was decided by the numeric series 1121231234…

For example, the first motive was extended only by the first interval of a TT since the first number in the numeric series is 1: C F# G# A D#.
The second repeat of B has the repeating chord arpeggiated quickly on the violin because the violin can’t play chords per se.

The sound of paper tearing, hands in water, tapping on bottles, and ringing bells denies the normally accepted instrumentation. This section starts to repeat but breaks down into fragments, then continues to break down while the next section builds up from fragments in a denial even of the structure like the edges of clouds.

Several foreign philosophers note that American’s are obsessed with structure. Several Japanese architects have taken up the idea of a cloud as a more useful metaphor. There’s no place one section ends and the other begins in my composition because they overlap just like on my composition “Dune Cascade.”

The D section provides a change in the harmony using Lutoslavski chord strands descending the Lydian Dominant #5 key from C but restacking the intervallic design of the given voicing each time, essentially ignoring the key but which perhaps the mind unconsciously recognizes as containing a formal logic.

E features a change of mode to Harmonic Major b5 and a change to a counterpoint texture. After the first subject is presented, it enters again on the “+ of 3.” The next entrance is a melodic inversion rhythmically augmented starting on the 5th on the “+ of 2” in the second measure. The last is the retrograde augmented starting on the third in the lowest voice on the “+ of 4” in the second measure.

Together they are treated as accompaniment over which the original version of the 1st theme of the A section is played as well except that the counterpoint runs out at the wrong place for where the A theme finishes and the B theme starts.

F leaves behind both the repeating motive series 112123…and the contrapuntal texture and gives a new accompaniment figure back in lyd dom #5. The ambiguous accompaniment figure’s root follows a version of the blues progression while 6 note chords built on C and G# taken from the Lutoslavski chord strands repeatedly alternate, ignoring the blues progression.

This presentation of all relevant changes through all of these sections of; orchestration, instrumentation, harmony, mode, texture accompaniment figure etc… is also taken from Totalism.

The solos are all based on playing the shapes of letters and numbers on the fingerboard and is why the melodies sound so angular. You can hear where these are played without alteration when the piano and the bass play 16th notes during their solos.

I was not able to mix in quotations of the first or second theme during solos because I’m not yet good enough of a composer to make those functional in that way within the framework of a whole-tone scale. And the solos sound quite similar between instruments as well. Those are two of my weaknesses on this piece.

After the radical innovation exhibited by “Dune Cascade” and “Rings of Saturn”, it was hard to find a way forward that could top those but the Double Frame, the increasingly complex chords built on a single root provided a path beyond them.

For me the vector provided by our rootless cosmopolitanism seems preferable at the higher levels of a student’s education to the sensual immediacy of a single rigid inherited, tradition from a myopic, anti-intellectual cultural pocket that creates music which is used, among other things, as a talisman against other cultures, religions and multiple forms of identity (and sexuality) except perhaps Reggae (which mostly affirms those).

Radical innovation in the sciences and flexible open-minded diplomacy which both come from the same mind-set are exactly what’re needed (along with voluntary simplicity though in the post-minimalist era less has stopped being more in the case of music) so we can bequeath a healthy world to our children and free of armed conflict.

Developments in music have long helped feed innovations in other fields such as art, science, architecture, philosophy, psychology, literature, linguistics and visa versa. Creative people mine each others work all the time. And although music like this will likely never make money the way popular styles do'

It is nonetheless essential for the late (meta/trans)modern agenda of moving beyond mindless “tradition” that cuts down all trees, extracts all minerals, pollutes the air and water, and is on the way to paving over every inch of the earth if we can survive long enough as a species.

It’s our mindless habit that allows the corrupt psychologists employed by the corrupt marketers and advertisers to research the modern experiment of how best to get control of our children’s psyches and to make them and everyone else unconsciously feel that they need all the bullshit products and services (like Pinesol, Windex, table wax, air-fresheners, expensive lotions, special shampoos, deodorants, ammonia, chlorine, tire polish, Draino, perfumes, insect sprays, white bread, Fruit Loops, Ho-Ho’s, Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Transformer action figures et al) through the emotional coercion contained in TV commercials.

Images that are primarily successful to make most of us, the world over, think that standing among our exotically supercharged appliances in a party dress within our poison homes built by our unenlightened construction practices with their sealants, glues, paints, varnishes, etc… in the attempt to fool our friends and neighbors that we’re richer and classier than we are is the goal which bequeaths happiness.

Our great grandfather’s never needed any of it. The fact we think we absolutely MUST have them has nothing to do with what is sane, natural or healthy. It has to do with how inadequate the advertisers have convinced us that we are without all the fancy cars, lipstick and makeup etc…

It’s not that people aren’t smart. It’s that they’re not smart enough. All this crap is the root of unhappiness. A compassionate relationship to ourselves, each other and the earth’s plants and animals, if not happiness, will at least provide a smoother transition through this world for our grandchildren since it’s probably too late for us in all our beleaguered castles.

The divine is not calling you to be an obedient, passive, conformist. The divine is calling you to make a difference.

When someone like Noam Chomsky goes on TV and is interviewed by an intelligent news anchor, it all looks so nice and clean. But if you were to let the general public in to attend, every time he’d say something that uneducated monkeys don’t like to hear, there’d be constant cat calls from the peanut gallery. The primates would be hanging from the ceiling. No interview could take place.

When Chomsky’s message goes out to America and the world, it’s not received by rational people. It’s received by people raised to think that the way to convince people of what you’re talking about is through pressure, because that’s the only thing THEY understand (or their family, friends and neighbors) so that must be the way smart people work too. They’re the kind of people for who the pomp and at church, or the synagogue, or the mosque, or the temple, which is just old fashioned theatrics trying to convince people how cool the people of that religion are, is an acceptable substitute for real spirituality.

It’s much better to pretend to be pious than to actually be pious. This message is not for either kind of person. I more believe the Quakers, Shakers and Luddites etc… This message is for people smart enough to understand it who probably already know most, if not all about it because they take the time to educate THEMSELVES by reading actual books and food labels etc...

If someone is a traditionalist, or a conservative, they’ll try to block radical innovation in all it’s forms. Even if they hired someone to help their company achieve innovation because it’s what you’re supposed to want as a business person, they’re sure to fire them quick. It goes against everything they stand for.

The all American car companies like Ford killed themselves and the city of Detroit because of mindless tradition and resistance to change. Make cars cheaper, lighter, more fuel efficient and safe so we can compete in the world market? No No No No. That’s un-American. We’d have to change our production line. Can’t do that. It’s too expensive. Hey, someone designed a stratified spark engine that gets 100 miles to the gallon. Buy the patent and never produce it because we can’t let our buddies, the fuel companies, earn less. And don’t let the public find out.

In the end they thought they could just buy cheap Japanese motors and put their logo on the façade they were slapping on it.
We think we can force people to buy what they don’t want or need and can’t use… indefinitely… because we’re too lazy to do anymore what we’re famous for, INVENT great stuff like the first light bulbs, phones, cars, lasers and rockets to the moon.

When someone is the tough guy, it’s much easier to push other people around than to innovate. They’re already trying to force not only the smart people in America, but intelligent people all over the world who have a solution, to stop trying to solve world problems and to live as dumb and lazy as they do, sticking their head in the sand trying to say there’s no global warming, or environmental degradation and what not. Let’s wish them a nice congratulations.

They’ve been a big success in being the bully of the world with their grade school intelligence. All they’ve been up to now are a majority of unimaginatives with no devotion to the truth but which is the only religion the worthy will ever embrace.

If you’ve been an environmental activist and war protester God bless you.

The people who voted to having their spy planes fly over but then crash on the coast of China and caused them to create a military identification zone over the ocean so American nonsense couldn’t as easily be sent to China from Korea and Japan now that they’re strong enough to tell the old bullies, America, and their allies to go fuck themselves;

The good feelings they’ve given China toward us over the years will cause them to bully us and the rest of the world around now instead. It’s the bully’s just dessert. Thanks for that and fuck them. They’ve destroyed the lives of everyone’s grandchildren. There’s a special place for them in Dante’s hell.

Yeah, but, does Humor belong in Music?

Heavy shit, man. All of it. I can't say I enjoyed all of it (the music), but I CAN say I liked MOST of it.

Sound pretty much random to me. I think you would have been a better math/science teacher than a musician...
But that's only my opinion.



Cheers,
Bas

Hi BasV,

it doesn't have to always be about making a pretty sound. In your defense though, the concepts presented were not as clear as they could have been. The texture was too thick and covered up the ideas a bit too much. My next piece will try to clean all that up.

Android,

that's the classical Indian orientation that humor doesn't belong in music. And for the most part, the toilet and other humor that most people go for does the opposite of enrich people's spiritual life. They engage in degrading fat people, blacks, women, children, and what not. If you're trying to reach people to improve the world, I don't think that's a path that can accomplish it. Although there are some humorists that can be funny without lowering themselves to that level, it's rare.

btw have you guys seen Source Code or Cloud Atlas?

Both are on my "need to watch eventually" list.

I'll have to watch Beleaguered Castle, though I have read/seen Cloud Atlas. The latter movie didn't present me personally with anything new as far as ideas or conceptions about the world and whatnot; not all of our ideas have to come first to us from art, lest how would our art ever have any ideas?

For the music: I enjoyed this both aurally and intellectually, though to the latter end I must say - I could hear that the music was structured, but on first exposure, I could not necessarily hold clearly in mind the structure. That's not necessarily bad, of course. I do think, though, that the matter of structuredness versus learning the structure is important to comment on. Music that is often highly structured and organized - the key plans of Mahler's symphonies through the tone-row-based Second Viennese School works through Milton Babbitt and beyond - often does not sound as such, at least to fresh ears. Of course, once one attempts to find access to the ivory tower of Classicism which encompasses the aesthetics of those works, one becomes quite capable of gaining access to an respect for the structuredness and specific structure of an individual work. But once again, I can't find exceptional means by which the specific structure of a piece is more important than the fact that it is structured, it's structuredness, as I've called it.

Now, the fact that the structures often employed by Schönberg or Berg or Boulez or any number of dropped names often contain within themselves structures which recur in permutations and variations or perhaps symmetries is perhaps a wayroad into what feels to the analyst or explorer like a deeper understanding of the work, perhaps even akin to a spiritual revelation. In my mind, this is all still just calculus. The integral of f(x) = 2x has infinite particular solutions, either denoted as such by a variable when the answer is presented, or from which a specific solution is requested by means of the particular details of what worksheet or textbook presents to a student. In this way, it becomes harder to justify a particular realization of a generative process for music or any artwork beyond deference to aleatory, whim, inspiration, or aesthetic duress.

In this way, I consider the American archetype you've discussed, Tatsu, of smart-but-not-smart-enough as an unspectacular, specific solution to a metacognitive human function, whose details come from a combination of whim and aesthetic duress. I worry about the more dazzling possibilities of that function, metacognition, though: without discipline, metacognition can and will be taken to lethal extreme, and it's a heat-death it causes, not a peaceful slip into satori.

Nevertheless, thank you for this music - it's really quite enjoyable.


Regards,
Maynard

Hi Maynard,

the movie is called Source Code. Beleaguered Castle is the name for the secret government project depicted in that movie.

Babbitt lead the way for people like John Adams, however, Babbitts music didn't ever really do it for me, though he was definitely great.

In any event, within the new Meta modern-period, art is not necessarily about a philosophical position as it was for so many of the Modernists. Although that can play a part, it's now including or is ONLY coming from a structure of FEELING. I have a certain aesthetic that I personally go for and it has nothing to do with my philosophical orientation really, although I can try to use the music to sell my philosophical orientation to others if I so desire.

John Adams doesn't use all of the esoteric scales and he uses orchestra, it's just a change of aesthetic preference which for me just feels too genteel.

As far as philosophical orientation goes, the late post-modern philosophical discussions center around how to re-enchant the world without regressing to the unreflective world of say premodern Shintoists. We're trying to find a place for subjectivity within philosophy which has traditionally been completely outside of it's domain. Dreams, visions, religious sentiment need to be given a place within philosophy. And theory, analysis, and logic need to be given a place to exist within subjective domains.

If I've put much more mentation into my music than most would ever dream of doing, perhaps I've tilted the scale back towards the center a bit for music, what most would normally consider to belong in the domain of the emotive side of things.

Matthew Fox says the music which is of the highest value to us now would be shamanic. He says further that art is religion and visa versa. What priests do is a stage production at root. Artists, musicians and creatives of all sorts are modern priests, letting us discover new depths of human experience.