Thursday, August 18, 2022

Harmonic Story

Double Harmonic scale. When I was 16 or so I thought I made up this scale. More than 40 years later I found out what it was. 



Saturday the 20th, there's going to be a Rocky Horror at White Eagle Hall

¨§¨

Drama has an intrinsic ideology. You have to punch down. It's always about individuals. There has to be dramatic tension or conflict. The only way we learn about characters is through conflict and by what they do. What a character does is who they are. 

A story is like the parody of old movie trailers: One man/girl/robot wants to do one thing and they make a decision to do some harder thing. Around then they meet a boy/talking dog/love interest which further complicates their earlier decision. Their goal becomes more complex before it all comes apart at the end. But then with those lessons they learned earlier, and probably with the girl/dog/minor god they met earlier they have a plan to overcome things.  Then we're in act three and you know how that goes. 


Tuesday, August 16, 2022

Capitalism Does Not Exist

"Capitalism" is a structure or framework used to describe the political economy. It was invented by socialists in the mid-19th Century as a kind of straw man of what they were opposed to. 

The primary inventor of "capitalism" was of course Karl Marx. And it was a pretty good theory about how the political economy operated. But then, of course, a bunch of people who were in favor of the status quo (whatever it was) took a look at the theory and said to themselves "Why yes, this 'capitalism' seems perfect. We are pro-capitalist." They did this without any irony.

A Marxist analysis of the political economy has a great deal of merit to it. It has famously been picked apart by a whole variety of thinkers, from Veblen to Bakunin, to feminist and critical-race theorists, and of course rather disingenuously by a lot of right-wing propaganda. 

One of the big problems with Marxism, and consequently with any description of "capitalism" is its reliance on this binary: capitalist/proletariat each work toward their own self interest. In what we might call "capitalist economics" this even has a name "homo economicus." And this person... doesn't exist. People do things which aren't in their economic self-interest all the time. The Freakonomics guys made a whole career out of it. 

Everyone is a Marxist. 

Capitalism was (for all intents and purposes) made up by Marx. "Capitalist" economists are all "Marxist." That's neither good nor bad. But it does call into question what is non-Marxist economics? Not a whole heck of a lot, as it turns out. But by and large, all modern economists use a model of the economy which, although modified, essentially utilizes a Marxian framework of the political economy.

Anarchism And You

One of the earliest critiques of Marxism came from Bakunin and the anarchists. Interestingly, Bakunin was a Russian intellectual (and, unfortunately, super anti-Semitic), while Marx was a German with a Hegelian philosophical background. 

Wednesday, August 03, 2022

The Treadle on the Wheel

I'm trying to make numerous ambient experiments. 

I'm using Samplitude's electric piano and a free LABS sound from Spitfire on the keyboard. The pedals (which you don't see) are playing a Mod Duo X. Also going into the Mod Duo X is a Behringer 110 controlled by a 960 sequencer. 
A Korg NuBass is the bass, a Volca Sample is the drum machine.