Who the hell am I?
Good question. And altho I may not have a good answer, a new intro post is probably a good idea. I’ve done a lot of random things that may or may not have anything to do with each other and I should explain, to you the person, or persons, or malevolent AI, so kindly showing interest, giving me your time. It’s only fair.
Seems like a lot tho. Can I do it? Probably. Will do it? Absolutely not.
“Jim Haku” is a punk name. You could take it two ways, but you can’t do anything about either. If there’s one thing I am sure of, is that it’s the name I’ve been using for a while. I know because I was there, most of the time. I remember, I think. Pretty sure. Yes…attitude. That’s what Punk is about. The rest I don’t know anymore. I mean I like a lot of music and I’ve just been getting deeper into that. Punk is a lot of fun as young person, because ruining your life is fun, maybe the most fun you can have. But at some point, you can’t get any deeper because your life can’t get any worse without dying, and if you aren’t already famous, it hardly seems worth it. So I have been getting into learning more music theory, and learning more Japanese and there’s actually somewhere to go with these things. And I could even get better at art, photography, writing, life in general. Like, really putting in the effort at these things is not “Punk”. So, maybe the whole thing is questionable.
I accept your question.
Philadelphia
January 2024
The Year 2023, Common Era
Hi there, I mean, Hello, world. I have returned to blogging.
In this, the year: 2023. At the end.
I don’t have any thoughts about it at the moment that I’d like to share; I’m in the middle of a backup proj I want to get finished. But I felt it must be noted that 2023 just looks so good as a set of numbers. I’m sad to see it go.
That’s all for now.
2020-2021
Just a quick note here to cap things off, might return to blogging but I want to work on other projects. Like a podcast. Gave up on year end lists a while ago, you may have noticed. It was a good way to organize my thoughts, when my thoughts were mostly about new music releases. Though I still have a passion for music, my opinion on whatever just came out or streaming format wars or whatever whatever—just doesn’t seem that important. And the people agree; these posts have never really gotten a lot of comments, maybe none. That’s fine. I can just forget about it and go back to what this blog has always been about, reviewing records.
How many notes are there?
Here’s another video by someone else. Maybe I should make videos at some point. Sorry if I keep going over the same material but no one really seems to be paying attention, I’m just ironing out the concept more and more. Hopefully.
How many keys are there?
Here’s a clip of Victor Wooten explaining a very basic concept of music theory that is not always explained so simply. The answer you get is easy once you know, but it’s not the intuitive answer. Even he got it wrong at first. Why? Because in traditional music theory there are 6 keys that overlap:
(this image from the circle of fifths wiki does not even bother to name a♯ and a♭ which is…interesting)
These keys, disregarding the sharp/flat system, contain the same notes. Sure, if you are intentionally doing something clever with modulation in a piece, like going around the Circle, you would never go from E to C♭ in your head or on paper, but the sound is no different in equal temperament. (Just noticed I’ve been spelling “temperament” wrong for as long as I’ve been using it. Never heard the “a” pronounced, that’s something new.)
This matters (to me) because as I’ve said in the previous posts, there’s nothing inherently “natural” to the “natural note”. There’s only the note you start on and the intervals. Take the point that modes are not keys but scales. If you are playing in C, you can start playing a C scale melody but let’s say you switch to playing the Dorian mode. The key hasn’t changed, you are still playing entirely on the white keys, but the tonal center has, and the intervals of the scale have. That’s a difference you can hear. There’s a game you can play with traditional music theory that I’ve come to appreciate more than dismiss the more I get into it, but the average person (non-musicians; people without perfect pitch) really are never going to. That’s fine but it’s not the thing I’m interested in. Hopefully I can spend more time on interesting things in the future.
繕った [records tumblr]
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