kineticturtle
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MJP

I'm very excited for the imminent birth of my second child, which is due to occur any day/hour/minute now. This impending event does raise concerns about my ability to keep up on Weekly Beats in the fashion I'd like, so I've proposed to myself the following exercise, which I'm sharing here in case anyone else

I intend to revisit - in various ways - the first half of the year, in reverse order. This does NOT mean that I'll be simply remixing existing material (although that is an option for any particular week), but using a variety of methods - borrowing a melody, a subject or an instrumentation, reusing a set of samples, etc. The goal is to avoid the rut I often find myself in where I have difficulty committing to an idea, without eliminating the possibility of essentially new compositions.

For example, yesterday I posted this tune, which I'm very happy with:
http://weeklybeats.com/#/kineticturtle/ … atron-2000

Now I could take any number of angles with this.
I could write another song about pandas, or any other ursine subject;
I could record another track with LSDJ, guitar, accordion, electric piano and vocals;
I could write another song based on something my toddler said;
I could even arrange another song with an unexpected Mike Patton-ey rap section.

What I think I'll actually do is take the main melody, which is nearly a 12-tone row, and complete the row and extrapolate it into a piece.

etc.

Now if this interests you and you'd like to follow suit, you certainly don't have to be as crazy as I am (or as into early 20th century academic wankery as I am), but my goal is to be as creative with my methods as I usually am with writing pieces 100% from scratch. I just think revisiting things will be fun, and giving me a leaping off point will keep me on track through the rest of the year.

Whadda y'all think?

Pocaille
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Montreal

That's a good idea!

Congratulation for your second child!

fc
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Melbourne, Australia

Lovely idea. I won't do it, but it's a lovely idea.

I find it really weird that music is "academic wankery" if there is some hypothesis/theory involved: i.e. serialism. How that falls into academic wankery is well beyond my comprehension, but there you have it. I guess I am, in fact, an academic wanker!

Yes, many congratulations on your child! What an effort.

kineticturtle
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MJP

The term "academic wankery" is intended as a joke, don't read into it too much. wink

Thanks y'all!

george bowles
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St Louis

i like wankery

kineticturtle
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MJP

Well here we go; Weekly Retrograde #1 will go live today. If anyone else decides to participate, I'm tagging my posts weeklyretrograde and including a link to the sister piece in the description, as well as an explanation of their relationship. Hope everyone had a great week!

kineticturtle
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MJP

And there it goes: http://weeklybeats.com/#/kineticturtle/ … -mechanica