This weekend's musical goof

[Jeff]

I only had time to record a draft of 4 bars of that song I heard last week in my dream. (It takes a long time to get anything real done.) Just expect a feel here; nothing like a real song...

It's in the yahoo folder, and it's called Distance Plus Time. Also I did another one of those direct links. Again, they erase the files if no one downloads them, so you have about a week on this one:

www.savefile.com/files/7804517

[Jeff]

Distance Plus Time

Here’s what I am writing about—and, of course, I am using this note as an excuse to figure that out for myself. First, I was thinking of Woody Allen’s definition of comedy as “tragedy plus time.” It might be a mistake to call it his definition, since he seems to be at pains to make fun of it. Still, I think it is not wholly off the mark. Second, I was thinking of the separation among people. Imagine that you wanted to measure your separation from someone. (Are these separations always comical? …maybe in Dante’s sense…) What would you even call such a quantity? I think melody is interesting because it depends on similar connections and separations. An interval is the space in-between notes played simultaneously; and a melody is the progression of these connections, a transition—meaningful separation—between connections around a…what? What is the sense of melody? What is this idea of meaningful movement between us? (I only know it is a light to moths like me…)

Jeff

PS Five distinctions between tragedy and comedy, I don't agree with them all, but they've all been argued by people smarter than I:

1. Comedy deals with people lower than we are, tragedy with people higher.

2. Comedy begins in a bad situation and ends in a good one. A tragedy does just the opposite.

3. Comedy integrates a whole society at the end of the work whereas tragedy focuses on and isolates the tragic hero.

4. Comedy has non-incremental repetition; tragedy has incremental repetition.

5. Tragedy affirms responsibility whereas comedy ignores responsibility.

[Jeff]

I was noodling around tonight at about 10:30 not really doing anything just playing on the old DX7. It's got the best action of any of my keyboards--in fact all the others have begun to fall apart. It seems I play every keyboard that comes to me into the ground.

Anyway, I got an idea for a song. I didn't want one because I won't have time to develop it for about 4 weeks. But I did a quick recording and uploaded it to the yahoo site in my music folder. If anyone wants to hear it I called it What Happened to Us, for lack of a better title. When I write I often copy the patterns of pitch inflection in my speaking voice to suggest melodies, and those words are at the core of all the melodies in this piece of fluff.

A direct link to the file: www.savefile.com/files.php?fid=9234251

As usual, the direct link will disappear after a week.