What I Have Discovered Through Music In My Life

The things that making music has taught me about the musical condition:

1) In being a writer of music, there is NO substitute for being a good listener with a clear and peaceful mind. This approach forgives many other limitations.

2) Changing what already exists in search of something new is a shortcut that costs the musician in purity of vision.

3) Melody is troubling in its common tendency to usurp the ability of a song to be a conversation. Instead, a song becomes an untouchable train rolling by.

4) Jazz is generally right to structure the song as a conversation, but to me it misses the point when it forfeits emotional nuance for cleverness or even eloquence, which is simply another tool in the ultimate goal of emotional communication.

5) Most "perfect" sounds are not created by traditional instruments, although traditional instruments are an important practical means of inspiration.

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I have to admit that I am so excited for the new Brian Eno album that I can hardly stand it. What else excites me right now? Everything Christian Fennesz has recorded, Boards of Canada, the first Animal Collective record (which is not derailed by melody).