Friday 4 June 2010

Music as Meditation - Introspective and Dedicated listening

Do you ever use music to relax? I'm betting most people do, in the form of some background music whilst they read a magazine or work on their computers. But do you ever really focus on what you're listening to, getting lost inside it and using it as a form of meditation?

In this post I'm going to share some of the methods I use when I really want to relax or listen closely to a piece of music. I'm not saying that this is how it should be done, or that this is the best way to do it, but its just what works best for me and what I like doing.

I made an Ambient album, and its completely FREE to download

If anybody wants to hear the kind of music that I make, this is a sample from my more relaxed side. Its a collection of pieces I've made over the past year, some structured and others experimental exploration. I've divided it into two 'EPs' so to speak - The first one (Windowledge Doll EP) is shorter, more relaxed and consisted mostly of Pianos, keyboards and string arrangements. The second (The Red Noise EP) is darker and, despite only having two tracks, is longer than the former (mainly due to the first track clocking in at 30 minutes!). The title track was made mostly using iPhone apps as instruments, whilst the second is based on my favourite JFK speech.

The link is HERE if you want it.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think ;)

Tuesday 1 June 2010

Any form of competitive music is complete and utter bullshit

I'm not just talking X-Factor/Idol and Eurovision, I'm talking Battle of the Bands as well. Little things like this have absolutely no meaning with regards to quantifying the quality of music, as is well demonstrated by the almost universal hatred of all the "winners" of competitions such as these, despite how many thousands of people there seem to be who cause them to "win" this pretty much useless competition.