They brought back the internet yesterday. After 90 days… We survived this, thanks to many connections who could provide internet to us. But then my heart is with all the people who had lost their jobs and businesses because of this disaster. Fuck them.
I have this thing striving in me that I want to have the best of the best. I want to be ethically and morally better than all standards and norms and act in the best way possible. I want to maximize love, care, ethics, kindness, attention, and beauty. And somewhat I see the nation of maestros as people at the utmost height of this.
I think for me, Markdown was the boundary in which minimalism breaks. I liked both richly designed prints, and I loved handwriting and typewriter text. But when it comes to Markdown, it plain text with structures, and design stripped out of everything. It is so ugly and inhumane and intolerable that I cannot stand it. That is why I have put so much time designing iA Writer templates or custom markdown renderers. It suffocates humanity. And with LLMs only generating Markdowns. I’m sad.
There is something fundamental to the way I both understand and compose music that I have come to believe is very much like a parallax effect in Computer Graphics. This is nothing new; I have had the idea for around a decade plus now; but I never thought I should write it down. And so; today; I felt that I need to relax a little bit and just work on something out of 1285 and my diaries; This came to my mind. I have grown to work on 1285 and the theories exclusively with the Archive ; but when I compose; I do it either behind the piano or the guitar or with my offline almost airborne iPad; dedicated to peace of mind with only artistic software. (mostly Staffpad; my main app for making music) and so I never externalize anything related to music in the Archive . However; let’s talk about parallax:
I am very familiar with the idea of counterpoint; and I suspect readers with music understanding beyond a certain point know too. But this requires no understanding of the thing as I’m going to explain it; so don’t worry. Pouya always gives introductions to what he is doing and going to say (only if I have already explained; you may be given a jump to another place in my writings).
So — counterpoint is when you hear a piece and you hear multiple melodies. It is not your usual pop song for example. In counterpoint; you have melodies whereas in simple music you have one melody. For example; take a song like almost all pop songs: You have a lead singer who sings the melody and then there are other instruments complementing this melody; There are different forms of instruments; you have a drum kit that tells the listener and all the players the tempo of the piece. It acts as the main coordinator. You have guitars that are mostly an accompanying melody going with the main one being sung by the singer. When they have “solos” or the focus goes on them; the singer usually stops. The solo here; is basically a filler. And you have all other things; piano chords for example; accompany and complement the guitars. They are all in the service to each other. And then there is a family of voices and sounds called “Pads”. These are continuous sounds that sustain for a while. The best example is a string section: A group of players playing violin together. These sounds are also very well made using synthesizers. What you definitely hear in a pop song: The point of Pads in modern music is to ground it in something we call “Chord Progression”. Basically after the famous piece Canon in D; people began looking at music like this: There is a repeating theme of basic notes; that are long; then you get the atmosphere of how the piece should be. Then the melody varies; but it follows the chords in the chord progression. It is a form of controlled surprise.
Now; counterpoint is the older and more different practice. Instead of each instrument following the main melody (and sometimes showing a form of conversation with it); it was made for choirs.
In choir; people have the same voice. You can’t do things with many different instruments. So the idea was genius: If you have only one instrument; have multiple melodies.
How? Each melody is separate; it has its own ups and downs and its own timeline. The lovely part is in writing these melodies such that they go with each other. In a way that while each melody is independent; they all complement each other.
There has been great great advancements to the counterpoint as well. For example; sometimes — which is actually all the time — the melodies compete for attention. You hear one instrument and then your ear jumps to another and follows that. You may think that is accidental or that you are doing it; but that shift is the magic of counterpoint. And it creates a sort of conversation that is very rich.
Bach is known to be the height of counterpoint. And we have other greats; “Conversation with Myself” of Bill Evans is one great example.
Now this brings me to the idea of parallax. It is a form of pop meeting the counterpoint. Or perhaps it is something else entirely. I’m not sure.
If previously we had chord progression; say four chords; slowly repeating. Now think about a “meta-chord progression”: Another chord progression; whose first chord plays so slow it covers the whole chord progression; then on the second time of the chord progression repeating; it moves to its second chord; and on the third repeat; its third chord:
This is basically a counterpoint in the service of single melody; and basically gives you a parallax effect. This is one of the most amazing ways to write music.
Each chord progression’s chord sets a mood in the piece that you can feel and these moods change till they repeat. Given that almost always the progressions are four chords; it feels a lot like seasons changing. And so imagine the parallax of four seasons changing in one meta-season. And this is not only confined to this; but to progressions of all different speeds and starting points.
When you compose a symphonic piece; if you give the strings and brass section the parallax and then on violin 1s; and the woodwinds have very fast patterns and melodies; All in contrast to the slow parallax layers of the strings and brass; (say you have the level one progression on violin 2 + viola + cellos; the meta-level on contrabass and the meta-meta-level on French horns and the Tuba); it will result in the most dramatic and epic symphonic writing that you can imagine; It feels like comets coming out of the sky with some with much different speeds; some in the front and some in the back.
I use this parallax always. Music without this sometimes feels empty for me.