4 ms·

Zed Shaw: What I Been Up To Lately

16 points by twampss 17y ago

stcredzero 17y ago
Knowing where the One is. Easy for 2 3 and 4 beats. In most styles of music, more than that is treated as a compound of 2 and 3 beats. So 5 is 1-2-1-2-3 1-2-1-2-3 or 1-2-3-1-2 1-2-3-1-2. There is one Middle Eastern 9/8 rhythm which is 1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-3. There is the obvious and symmetric 9/8 that Irish trad enthusiasts are familiar with: 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3. By treating things as compound rhythms, you never have to remember where the one is. One is one. You just have to remember how many beats there are this time around. I think this comes from the way humans walk. Since we are bipedal, we naturally fall into gaits with 2 or 3 beats. (Skipping is based on 3. Waltz step is another one based on 3. Since we have two legs, we have to repeat on one foot to get 3. 4 is really just a smoothed over 1-2-1-2.)
- wglb 17y ago
  I don't quite parse "Take Five" that way, but I will give it another listen. So is any music influenced by the various gaits of a horse?
  - stcredzero 17y ago
    Old Time, Bluegrass, and French Canadian trad fiddle.
wglb 17y ago
The pain of doing something new: "Me: Never mind, I guess I have to make it first."
- blueben 17y ago
  The pain of not knowing what you're doing, such that you can't even explain it to a willing listener.
  - wglb 17y ago
    Interesting--I read it as being a new concept that people didn't immediately get. I felt that way the first time I heard about the Smalltalk IDE. It wasn't until I tried it that I understood it. I had no previous frame of reference for it.
neilk 17y ago
A browser for music, isn't that what Songbird was supposed to do? The idea was that it was a web browser / RSS reader optimized for acquiring linked media files. A similar attempt to break out of the iTunes walled garden. Although Zed seems to be talking about making some internet-friendly format for describing the band and their albums and other works. That's an interesting idea, although such formats don't seem to take off in practice.

16 points by twampss 17y ago

Knowing where the One is. Easy for 2 3 and 4 beats. In most styles of music, more than that is treated as a compound of 2 and 3 beats. So 5 is 1-2-1-2-3 1-2-1-2-3 or 1-2-3-1-2 1-2-3-1-2. There is one Middle Eastern 9/8 rhythm which is 1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-3. There is the obvious and symmetric 9/8 that Irish trad enthusiasts are familiar with: 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3. By treating things as compound rhythms, you never have to remember where the one is. One is one. You just have to remember how many beats there are this time around. I think this comes from the way humans walk. Since we are bipedal, we naturally fall into gaits with 2 or 3 beats. (Skipping is based on 3. Waltz step is another one based on 3. Since we have two legs, we have to repeat on one foot to get 3. 4 is really just a smoothed over 1-2-1-2.)

wglb 17y ago
I don't quite parse "Take Five" that way, but I will give it another listen. So is any music influenced by the various gaits of a horse?
- stcredzero 17y ago
  Old Time, Bluegrass, and French Canadian trad fiddle.

wglb 17y ago

The pain of doing something new: "Me: Never mind, I guess I have to make it first."

blueben 17y ago
The pain of not knowing what you're doing, such that you can't even explain it to a willing listener.
- wglb 17y ago
  Interesting--I read it as being a new concept that people didn't immediately get. I felt that way the first time I heard about the Smalltalk IDE. It wasn't until I tried it that I understood it. I had no previous frame of reference for it.

neilk 17y ago

A browser for music, isn't that what Songbird was supposed to do? The idea was that it was a web browser / RSS reader optimized for acquiring linked media files. A similar attempt to break out of the iTunes walled garden. Although Zed seems to be talking about making some internet-friendly format for describing the band and their albums and other works. That's an interesting idea, although such formats don't seem to take off in practice.