June 29 • Issue #4
A newsletter featuring activities to spark creativity and inspire adventure. For more, check out the Get Afraid Journal.
Book Update: I’m making final revisions and acquiring book blurbs. It’s coming soon!
— Jed
“The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.”
— Gira Sarabhai
This Week: Listen To Music You Don’t Normally Listen To
Try sketching while you listen. Jazz? Metal? Classical? Opera?
📧 Hit Reply: What genres did you try? How did your drawings change with the music?
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🖋 Journal Entry
I’ve done this exercise a few times and I’m always surprised by how differently I feel after switching genres.
The last time I tried a bunch of new music, I discovered the funky synth bass of Boogie On Reggae Woman by Stevie Wonder. I probably would have never heard the song if I hadn’t bounced around genres on Spotify.
This week, I got up early and went outside to sketch in my Bullet Journal. I just drew what I felt for a few songs. Punk, Metal, Classical and K-Pop. Not award-winning, but it was still fun!
I haven’t fallen in love with a new musical genre, but I’ve definitely gained a better appreciation for the ones I’ve tried. Hope it does the same for you.
— Jed
Links About: Listen To Music You Don’t Normally Listen To
▷ Watch:
Is This Even Music? John Cage, Schoenberg and Outsider Artists
📖 Read:
Searching for Silence
John Cage’s art of noise.
On a simpler level, Cage had an itch to try new things. What would happen if you sat at a piano and did nothing? If you chose among an array of musical possibilities by flipping a coin and consulting the I Ching? If you made music from junk-yard percussion, squads of radios, the scratching of pens, an amplified cactus?
Notes:
His conceptual work 4'33" is four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence.
First performed in 1952, by David Tudor.
It was indeed controversial for the audience.
“[Author Kyle Gann] defines “4'33" ” as “an act of framing, of enclosing environmental and unintended sounds in a moment of attention in order to open the mind to the fact that all sounds are music.”
Unfamiliar sounds can make people panic if they’re trapped in a concert hall.
Cage’s work went over better in non-traditional spaces.
He was born in 1912, but didn’t have a music publisher until the 1960s.
He collected mushrooms and founded the New York Mycological Society.
His wallet was stolen by a mugger disguised as a U.P.S. man.
“Water Music” asks a pianist not only to play his instrument but also to turn a radio on and off, shuffle cards, blow a duck whistle into a bowl of water, pour water from one receptacle into another, and slam the keyboard lid shut.
🎵 Listen:
What Is Music? No, Seriously, What Is It?
How do we define something so abstract? Something we can't see, and can only hear?
Notes:
Music is a language we all understand, but we don’t all “speak”.
The barrier to entry for making music is steep.
Music is pitch and rhythm. Timbre is what makes a sound unique.
The building blocks of music are consonance (sounds that blend together well) vs. dissonance (sounds that don’t blend together well).
Check out the Flow State Newsletter!
Every morning, two hours of music perfect for working.
No algorithmic discovery – just humans making recommendations to other humans.
My favorite edition: Luke Mele
Reader Responses
Previous Activity: Visit a New Place of Spirituality or Culture
I’ve always loved the artistic scenes in stained-glass windows.
— Fake Pearson (But this could be you!)
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