Music. It always (but never really) changes me.

I have been listening to two things. First, early 1900's composers like Schoenberg, Strauss, with some mid 1900's as well(i.e. Karlheinz Stockhausen and Giacinto Scelsi) Second is stoner-doom-metal. My current favorites being Wiht and Horn of the Rhino.

The most apparrent comparison I can make is the interest in tone. Perfecting the quality of each note/chord/cluster/sound. Really, this is not tone at all. Timbre, or the quality of a musical note or sound that distinguishes different types of sound production(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbre), is what I mean.

Yes, I did just cite Wikipedia. Fuck you.

The composers of those eras of interest, and the downtuned sound most doom bands profess is a sound obsessed with expressing/changing/creating a very specific shape-colored sound. Either by playing a completely unrecognizable cluster of notes that is derived from a completely different musically theoretical way or simply putting fatter strings on your guitar and using very specific amplification parameters, the goal is similar.

And, now, where they both differ is dynamics. In fact, all modern music has completely lost all sense of dynamics whatsoever... We can blame this on the loudness obsession in audio production today and throughout history. Or, we can just say that dynamics are not a marketable aspect of music, and have somehow been pushed out of interest by flooding the (this sickens me as I type it) 'music-market' with over-produced, simple and repetitive ( to the point of insulting) 'songs'.

Here are some examples of all that I have mentioned:

I was going to post some Lady Gaga, because she is a fucking demon from the depths of a plastic sweatshop factory made of chicken nuggets. But, I will spare you the indecency.

If there are certain sounds that are always explicitly appealing...

Sometimes, I get dizzy when the scrollbars freeze. I hate that. My world is so warped and wrapped in stratifications. It's like the worst, most unhealthy rotting leaves that make the most un-malleable clay. Blue glowing metals and liquid crystals that are paid all in blood...

This was supposed to be poetic.

I have been listening to The Incredible String Band. I don't know much about them personally. She says they are Hobbits. They remind me of my uncles and aunts and cousins. When my whereabouts were a bit more dependent on what my parents were doing, I used to go visit them during annual summer family reunions, which usually consisted of a hundred or so three-to-eighty-year-old individuals picknicking, camping, yelling, card-playing, guitar picking, wailing, singing, hollering, getting-poison-ivying, bear chasing, creek dweelling, etc... The reunions were some of the most personally defining times of my life. There were mountains climbed, properties destroyed, badminton battles, too much soda, and all the sewage-filled creeks for to hunt for crawdads in in the entire universe.

The ' String Band's music reminds me of that. It carries a seemingly unintentional self-searching, and simple clarity that being young and surrounded by community and family fosters. I think it is because so much of their lyrics deal with very deep spiritual things, and the music is very simply composed and layered. It is fun, and serious, and purposeful, but always human. Much like arming a twelve year-old with a sling shot. Inevitably a bird will die, and hopefully someone will learn that what they do has meaning and affect.

I'll try and let them speak for themselves.

I thought this was relevant. It is in the description for this video on the youtube page:

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