New Song/Project - Feedback Appreciated
Tuesday, June 26 2012 @ 05:07 PM CDT

Hey everyone!

I'm working on a new project (read: set of songs) and would love to know what everyone thinks of the idea and the execution. I've been reading a lot about the relationship between language, sound, and color. I've also been thinking about the traditional structure of groups of songs that artists release, and how I might manipulate it to play with concepts and experiences of image as communicated by impressionistic imagery (color), language, and sound. Firstly, I came up with a very loose, over-arching narrative and then a structure through which I will communicate it. I've decided to put the divisions in the album in poetic terminology, using the word 'Canto' (kind of like in Lord Byron's "Don Juan") to express multipart songs that are vaguely connected by key, tuning, and concept. I've called the first song a 'Proem' because, just like in Hart Crane's "Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge," I'm using it to set the scene for the rest of the album. The next song after that one will be called "Devotions (To Anger)," and will conclude the first Canto of the project. I'm not sure how long it'll be, but it'll probably take the rest of the year due to the fact that there will be long period where I'll be unable to record. Each time I'm satisfied with a song, I'll post it to my bandcamp page (http://bmeyerson11.bandcamp.com/), but rougher versions will probably be up on Macjams before that happens. The entire album will be available for download when I'm done, but the release of songs will be serialized (because it amuses me, and reminds me of Dickens).

Anyways, here's the first song of the set:

http://macjams.com/song/73891

Thanks for reading/listening!

Re:New Song/Project - Feedback Appreciated
Tuesday, June 26 2012 @ 05:32 PM CDT

Great way to kick off your new project. I look forward to the next in the series.

Re:New Song/Project - Feedback Appreciated
Tuesday, June 26 2012 @ 05:45 PM CDT

Cheers, man.

It's something that I've been playing with in my poetry, and given that I can't draw worth a damn, I figured I may as well write some songs. It would be really cool to find a visual artist to collaborate with on this one. That would be fun.

Re:New Song/Project - Feedback Appreciated
Tuesday, June 26 2012 @ 10:54 PM CDT

i know nothing about poetry, but the concept is very intriguing. my dad had a stroke at one time and I remember that the part of his brain that is associated with language (spoken) was affected. this also affected how he saw words. he said they looked like chinese writing to him, no correlation with what he knew. he's fine now, but interesting how all of the senses work together. close to your theme though: language, sound (how he spoke after the stroke) and the visual aspect of language.

Re:New Song/Project - Feedback Appreciated
Tuesday, June 26 2012 @ 11:24 PM CDT

Quote by: michael2 i know nothing about poetry, but the concept is very intriguing. my dad had a stroke at one time and I remember that the part of his brain that is associated with language (spoken) was affected. this also affected how he saw words. he said they looked like chinese writing to him, no correlation with what he knew. he's fine now, but interesting how all of the senses work together. close to your theme though: language, sound (how he spoke after the stroke) and the visual aspect of language.

I only have a very vague understanding of how the brain actually works, but I'm sure that all those functions are interrelated. I'm looking for symbolic meeting points more than anything else, though -- how do you mold a line of images with the progression of a melody? For example, I always think about a blues scale, and how certain lines work better than others when sung in a downward progression. If the flat third, for example, hits a syllable that belongs to a word that is conceptually weak in relation to the rest of the line (weakness/strength is determined circumstantially, and is key to experimental scansion like generative metrics), the visceral reaction is less powerful. I've always thought in images, so for me, it's a cyclical series of contortions that, if timed correctly, cause an aesthetically resonant, rarified bit of space between the 'text' (ie the final product) and the audience. Walter Benjamin talks about that in the context of literary translation -- at the instant of transition between source and translated text, language purifies itself for a moment and sheds its localized, specified set of imperfections. I'm thinking of transitions from color to sound to language along the same lines, phrasing them as visceral (and almost physical), purifying contortions from color into the notion of a 'voicing' (or a motion into sound), then from sound into speech (or the expression of language), and then from language into a visual description (color/texture). Of course, everything is governed by signs, but we have different sets of them for different sensory experiences. I'm trying to conceptually unify those sets in a small way. I hope I'm making sense, because I can be vague and confusing more often than not.

Re:New Song/Project - Feedback Appreciated
Tuesday, June 26 2012 @ 11:32 PM CDT

Quote by: tf10music Quote by: michael2 i know nothing about poetry, but the concept is very intriguing. my dad had a stroke at one time and I remember that the part of his brain that is associated with language (spoken) was affected. this also affected how he saw words. he said they looked like chinese writing to him, no correlation with what he knew. he's fine now, but interesting how all of the senses work together. close to your theme though: language, sound (how he spoke after the stroke) and the visual aspect of language. I only have a very vague understanding of how the brain actually works, but I'm sure that all those functions are interrelated. I'm looking for symbolic meeting points more than anything else, though -- how do you mold a line of images with the progression of a melody? For example, I always think about a blues scale, and how certain lines work better than others when sung in a downward progression. If the flat third, for example, hits a syllable that belongs to a word that is conceptually weak in relation to the rest of the line (weakness/strength is determined circumstantially, and is key to experimental scansion like generative metrics), the visceral reaction is less powerful. I've always thought in images, so for me, it's a cyclical series of contortions that, if timed correctly, cause an aesthetically resonant, rarified bit of space between the 'text' (ie the final product) and the audience. Walter Benjamin talks about that in the context of literary translation -- at the instant of transition between source and translated text, language purifies itself for a moment and sheds its localized, specified set of imperfections. I'm thinking of transitions from color to sound to language along the same lines, phrasing them as visceral (and almost physical), purifying contortions from color into the notion of a 'voicing' (or a motion into sound), then from sound into speech (or the expression of language), and then from language into a visual description (color/texture). Of course, everything is governed by signs, but we have different sets of them for different sensory experiences. I'm trying to conceptually unify those sets in a small way. I hope I'm making sense, because I can be vague and confusing more often than not.

so everything is circular then. have you messed with any of those apps that turn pictures or colors into sound? you may be working backwards, but could give you some inspiration/insight.

Re:New Song/Project - Feedback Appreciated
Tuesday, June 26 2012 @ 11:37 PM CDT

Quote by: michael2 Quote by: tf10music Quote by: michael2 i know nothing about poetry, but the concept is very intriguing. my dad had a stroke at one time and I remember that the part of his brain that is associated with language (spoken) was affected. this also affected how he saw words. he said they looked like chinese writing to him, no correlation with what he knew. he's fine now, but interesting how all of the senses work together. close to your theme though: language, sound (how he spoke after the stroke) and the visual aspect of language. I only have a very vague understanding of how the brain actually works, but I'm sure that all those functions are interrelated. I'm looking for symbolic meeting points more than anything else, though -- how do you mold a line of images with the progression of a melody? For example, I always think about a blues scale, and how certain lines work better than others when sung in a downward progression. If the flat third, for example, hits a syllable that belongs to a word that is conceptually weak in relation to the rest of the line (weakness/strength is determined circumstantially, and is key to experimental scansion like generative metrics), the visceral reaction is less powerful. I've always thought in images, so for me, it's a cyclical series of contortions that, if timed correctly, cause an aesthetically resonant, rarified bit of space between the 'text' (ie the final product) and the audience. Walter Benjamin talks about that in the context of literary translation -- at the instant of transition between source and translated text, language purifies itself for a moment and sheds its localized, specified set of imperfections. I'm thinking of transitions from color to sound to language along the same lines, phrasing them as visceral (and almost physical), purifying contortions from color into the notion of a 'voicing' (or a motion into sound), then from sound into speech (or the expression of language), and then from language into a visual description (color/texture). Of course, everything is governed by signs, but we have different sets of them for different sensory experiences. I'm trying to conceptually unify those sets in a small way. I hope I'm making sense, because I can be vague and confusing more often than not. so everything is circular then. have you messed with any of those apps that turn pictures or colors into sound? you may be working backwards, but could give you some inspiration/insight.

I've never heard of any of those! Could you message me a link? In the meantime, I'll google it...

Thanks for taking an interest, man. It's nice to know that people dig my preoccupations.

Re:New Song/Project - Feedback Appreciated
Wednesday, June 27 2012 @ 08:56 AM CDT

you can use Audacity to see what sounds look like in the frequency domain.

if you have an iMac, you're welcome to use some code i wrote to convert pictures into sounds. that code was used to create the sound in this video:



you can see the original images in the song pic here:
http://macjams.com/song/62942

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