I’m up in the middle of the night because my obnoxious neighbor’s new guests were ringing the bell and banging on the door. Obnoxious friends of my obnoxious neighbor.

Back to writing about writing. I tried one post while listening to Sun Ra’s music. It was pretty thin, but it is a start. Maybe what I need to do is find the best versions of tunes to listen to. The version of “Love in Outer Space” I listened to was from the live album A Quiet Place in the Universe, and I can’t say that I liked it. I listened to part of another version that was better, but I can’t say that I like this tune at all. It almost sounds like it should be a bossa nova, though.

Rather than a uniform approach to writing about tunes, maybe I can develop several different types of commentary. If I blog about a video, I can comment on the visual element of performance. If I transcribe music I can include the transcription along with some indication of key centers and harmony. If a tune includes lyrics I can write a lyric transcription. In fact, each tune should stand on its own as material for a blog post, though I should still outline some areas to touch on.

Things to write about:

  1. musicians
  2. harmonies and melodies
  3. looseness or tightness of the music
  4. ideas from Lock’s and Szwed’s books
  5. ideas from my diss
  6. ideas that pop into my head

More later.