submitted.

Not sure really what to say. Burnt out I guess. Nights til two a-m. Sometimes three. Pretty much yeah. But in a good way if I suppose.







Yeah in a good way stuffed in the corner of my living room.

It's been a pretty solid couple months.

But it's off to the orchestra at the eleventh-plus hour the score all hundred-and-forty-six-or-something pages and a recording.


And looking back to it I remember these particular bits and pieces. In my bedroom maybe just folding clothes or something a long time ago hearing the introduction this huge orchestration of symphony and furious piano fortississimo and all. The chord progression maybe before that a simple arpeggiated piano line with some modulation thrown on top. A little orchestration to go along with. Then eventually maybe three months ago the main theme uttered on the Bechstein in E minor starting all quiet and building up to this raging thing of sorts landing on a F major at some point the ending everything. Building the orchestrations around that from this noise in my head. Painting the bricks of the fireplace all of a sudden stopping to go over to a mic by my living room window singing some vocal melody line eventually transposed and sung by someone who can sing much better than I. Going back and forth between the kitchen and my corner to record another idea. Writing out this part or that to play on the piano scratching in pencil notes or chords to go with it spinning around to record the idea erase try another take over and over and over and over.


All of those bits and pieces now bits and bytes on a tired hard drive maybe just maybe someday something more reverberations in a music hall perhaps created instead by real instruments real musicians and such.




...




After everything though all of it I sit here in the dark now just listening to this noisy recording made late one night the tube preamps adding some warmth though to the Bechstein some theme or other in C-sharp minor unmastered unorchestrated unanything and lean back in my chair and close my eyes and fall into it like nothing else not a finished song having spent months and months composing and finessing but no rather some three minutes of me improvising on an old piano in the dark.






But here then is the full recording of Singularity or in two parts over on my reverbnation page whilst I close my eyes to the sound of an old Bechstein.










... many thanks to James for his tireless efforts of hauling it down to my place to deal with me asking for just one more take just one more take the song would not be the same without your voice ...



* image of humanoid Robonaut 2 [R2] courtesy of nasa.gov/

Singularity in the key of E minor ...

We are like a star collapsing

beyond our understanding

beyond our comprehension

extrapolated rapidly-accelerating returns

integrated artificial infinite change

the world to pass ...

... to know the mind of God is to know ourselves ...

Now to just finish the laborious orchestrations ...

a snapshot of sixty-three bars.

I came across something a bit ago that - well - actually piqued my interest. Rare perhaps I don't know.

Well rare in the context it has to do with music (umm - cos I'm quite picky about the little amount of music I perceive to being acceptable to spending my time listening). And rare also as it has to do with perhaps my own music. Never easy to put out there and such but an upcoming composition competition for Seattle Rock Orchestra - whom I have been following for a while now as their style and direction seems to fall in line with my - well - symphonic rock-type of music project I am currently and continually obsessed a bit with - did catch my attention.

Already working on a song I have taken to calling 'Singularity' which is - yes - based on the theory of the technological singularity where mankind potentially evolves from carbon-based neurons to silicone-based hardware - it seemed at least partially logical to just step up its production and composition in order to potentially enter it in this somewhat unique opportunity-of-a-competition.




Singularity like a star collapsing beyond a point in accordance with the law of accelerating returns. Of integrated semi-conductor complexities. Event horizons. Feedback loops. Theoretical computations.

It was mostly just an idea in my head based on a simple harmonic minor tonic-fifth progression. Scrawled in my notebook five sections ... an introduction - middle one - middle two - orchestra - and finale. A piercing flute on the final E minor of the intro. Emphasis on the diminished A. An idea in four-part counterpoint amongst the strings during the orchestra section. A voice. Soprano-alto-tenor-bass choir. A rock ensemble and strings and flute and oboe and clarinet and bassoon and French horn and trumpet and trombone and percussion and timpani in E and B and ...

... and of course piano.

Of course piano. Three-four triplets up and down the keyboard for the first minute-twenty before a fortissimo E minor introduces the first of the middle sections.

And that is all I have for now.

Sixty-three bars. And much work to be done. So enough rambling and back to orchestrations.

the theory of the singularity.

It is just an idea.





A theory.





The singularity. The still-hypothetical emergence of artificial intelligence through technological means. An eventual merging of technology and human biology of sorts. A point when computers are no longer in our pockets but rather we ... become ... the computer. Of course we will not realize when this happens and so the very idea of the singularity will form more as what has been termed an 'intellectual event horizon.' We will not see it coming. It will have already happened.







As autumn is now in full swing and I am wrapped up for the next six months indoors it is time to move forward with this project of mine called Carbon. There are three songs on the immediate to-do list. And a fourth close behind. All ideas are both sketched out as well as compiled into some rough samples in Logic.


This is one.


The first. This idea of the singularity. A minute-ten. A chord progression in E minor. An enormous furious piano scales and thousands of notes as fast as I can possibly play. Up and down the keyboard. Hammering on the low end. A raging orchestra. Brass. Strings. Timpani. A huge C major. A symphonic choir. And a voice. In my head still but trying - as in all of the stuff I write it seems - trying to rise above it all.