Acetio | Blogma

TakingTheLongerWayHome.mp3

C a C C C a C C
Taking the longer way home. Let's take the longer way home.

G C G C F a F G F d C a G G
It's been so long, let's make up lost time. I need you here; I can't let go, so please don't change my mind.

C a C C C a C C C a a F G C a C

I've done some research on what aspects of music make a song popular. I've become convinced that one aspect is the structure of the melodic line, specifically that it needs to advance stepwise as in a scale. Jumps greater than whole steps make the song more complicated, while repeating the same notes make a song more simple.

I intended to compose a number of songs based on this idea, and the one that embodies the theory best is the one called 'You Tonight'

Rudyard Kipling is an interesting poet to study these days. His notions of the White Man's Burden seem so outdated, yet his experiences in Colonial India have echoes in the actions of the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I had some music snippets and thought it would be a good exercise to fill them out using an existing poem as the basis for rhythm and structure.

I chose Kipling's "Mandalay" because it had a structure that would work with what I already had melodically, and the verses are very visual.

For eons, people have enjoyed mapping the musical scale to the color spectrum.

Despite knowing that music is waves in air and light is waves in electromagnetic fields, I decided to do a little research and math.

The color spectrum ranges from 384 to 769THz (terahertz)


By repeatedly doubling a note (say A, at 440Hz) we can find where it would actually fall in the electromagnetic spectrum.

This was in my inbox:

Top 17 Country & Western Songs

17. I Hate Every Bone In Her Body But Mine

16. It's Hard To Kiss The Lips At Night That Chewed Your Ass Out All Day Long

15. If I Can't Be Number One In Your Life, Then Number Two On You

14. If The Phone Don't Ring, You'll Know It's Me

13. How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?

12. I Liked You Better Before I Got To Know You So Well

11. I Still Miss You Baby, But My Aim's Getting Better

10. I Wouldn't Take Her To A Dogfight 'Cause I'm Afraid She'd Win

9. I'll Marry You Tomorrow But Let's Honeymoon Tonight

8. I'm So Miserable Without You It's Like You're Still Here

7. If I Had Shot You When I First Wanted To, I'd Be Out Of Prison By Now

6. My wife Ran Off With My Best Friend And I Sure Do Miss Him

5. She Got The Ring and I Got The Finger

4. You're The Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly

3. Her Teeth Was Stained But Her Heart Was Pure

2. She's Looking Better After Every Beer

And the Number One song is . . .

1. I Ain't Never Gone To Bed With an Ugly Woman, But I've Sure Woke Up With A Few

Here it is, at long last - the synthesis of my interests in music, narrative, and visual arts: matchstick.com/acetio

"Feel the beat of the rhythm of the night!" - El DeBarge

Ursatz or Ersatz?

The assignment was to study the style of Terry Gilliam, who was adept at making animations with a minimum of actual animating (note how he never bothers to animate anyone's feet). So I did virtual cutouts in AfterEffects, reducing color to bring the file sizes down, and made this. (1.5MB)

Week 4

Electronic Music that tries, and fails

15-year old invents ultrasound mosquito larvacide device

The Future Stinks from Matt Slaybaugh on Vimeo.

In February 2005 or so I wrote a little song, "The Future Stinks" testing some of my theories about what makes a tune catchy.

And some time after that I created this video for the song in AfterEffects. The man lip-synching is Nikola Tesla.