News on www.kwase-kwaza.org . A pretty important piece about herpes � which may seem a bit medical but this kind of STD is now understood to be really important in the accelerated spread of the virus in Southern Africa in the 1990s � wisdom after the event.

Also a piece from the Guardian about John Adams� 11 September memorial piece premiere. I was really impressed both by the description of the piece and by how I imagine the piece to be. I had been mostly going off Adams � my glib line was that it has been downhill since China Gates. But I�ll get this one as soon as its on CD.

I posted a version of the second piece of from Schoenberg�s Op 19 Little Piano Pieces in the Forum on kwase.kwaza.org called The Birth of the Blues. I am listening to it now � the stimulus to post it was Potter�s book on Minimalists. The final chord of this piece is a mixture of Gmaj 7 Eb7maj 7 and B maj7 which is what the original 5ths was pointing at. This particular version of Op19 no 2 (or something like it) got sent to Andrew Keeling about two years ago � I am not sure quite what he made of it. At the time I thought this piece had something to do with James Brown. When Lamont Young was thinking about this piece he was also working on his version of the blues which erupted as the Forever Bad Blues Band. That, if I was pressed, I would say that the piece was doing in the Birth of The Blues Forum. I mailed Gilbert a copy of this and he seems to have taken it quite well. Apparently he has got rid of all his electric gtrs.

Last night walking around the Festival Hall I thought again about the piece which came to me on Sunday morning � the idea was that the piece had a directional slant in terms of stacking fifths � that I ought to let that vector be a key part of the piece � indeed the piece is now called Up5ths. Well I realised it in Cubase Go � I recorded the harmony part from the CZ101 into Wave in 2 chunks and then added added a flute line and a fairly straight cut from the Robin Frederick Choir�s hexachord. Its not long � just under two minutes � but it�s a start. There are earlier sketches scattered all round the place.

I listened a bit more to Lamont Young�s Naiad pieces � they flow into the late Cage string quartet piece which is extraordinary � you can really see what 50 years of trying this stuff took him to.

I collected together all the 5 Boulez pieces to see what if anything they might amount to and to try and make sure I didn�t start any more � the first with string bass and guitar, the second with windnoise and 2 flutes, the third with Fifths, the fourth which is composite and could be called Boulez and the Law of the Excluded Middle and the final one which is Boulez in the Woods in which he is harassed by Mark�s furious drum break. I suppose on this path I have ended up with powerbook music-making but at least I try to stick with material which either I have played or which people I know have or which is stolen from PB. This stuff probably needs to settle for a bit.

While I was putting this stuff I found a 5ths offshoot that I had quite forgotten about � on hearing again I cannot remember which direction I was taking � but I quite like the Dhorn playing. According to Potter LmY never neglects anything � 30years after the event he will refer back say to a canon he wrote when he was at UCLA. That is a risky strategy to follow unless you are some kind of world historical figure.

Gilbert mailed to say a disc is in the post. I have found the backing track from which OnepointTwo is created � I am keen to try Gilbert�s leadline and chords without the flute pastorale. I need to work out which track of Approximately Four Minutes I am going to use. I think the Midi file might be the thing.

One of the useful terms that Potter introduces in �Narrativity�. Minimalism disrupts or rejects conventional narrativity � begin-middle-endness. Or at least in its more extreme versions it does � or it plays tricks with it. There is a magnificent Reich piece where he swings a microphone over a speaker to which its connected � so there is a periodic feedback � not just simple harmonic motion � because eg of wind resistance, the wider inititial angle and the energy lost in flexing the chord so the period decreases and it ends in a continuous tone � the purest of process music. Now you can read a story into that sound pattern � but it is not the way that music normally narrates.

The �18.95 spent on Potter was amply repaid by just one sentence � not that this sentence is the only worthwhile one � but is the one one which discloses what the Dream Chord is. Are ready? It is G A D G#. Now you know � go to a piano and space these notes reasonably ie not as a total cluster but maybe with a tone or semitone in the middle. Play the chord and let it ring � you can hear the upper partials begin to create those magical effects revealing a domain of the sonic world you may never have encountered before. Now imagine what happens when the pitches are carefully microtuned to make to encourage reinforcement � how the atmosphere begins to shimmer.

This chord is very important in the String Trio � the exposition contains two of these chords � also a perfect fifth based on C � which makes LmY think that maybe the work is actually �in C�. Potter has some material on Young�s intervals. Apparently he likes the major seventh to be in the frequency ratio 17 to 9. This is very close to the even-tempered ratio � closer even than the 1.5 fifth is to the even tempered version. I usually think in terms of the major seventh being 15 to 8. This is wider and so in one sense more interesting. There is a school of thought that says since we are in a post-diatonic era the classical leading note has lots its dynamic power and therefore we should seek other leading note effects via other leading note tunings. Potter confirms that Young now seeks tuning ratios in which using only prime numbers but he hasn�t yet explained why. I suppose the simple 3 over 2 ratio for the fifth fits this criterion � also 5 over 3 for a major sixth. Anyway maybe the answer will turn up in a later chapter. Currently I have got to the Cage section and the sudden jump to what Young calls algorithmic pieces � based on instructions to the performer � and the exploration of unmusical sound.

On the Situationist list � someone has an automatic search engine which he sent off round the net looking for any reference to �the spectacle�. I am pretty impressed with the results:

The spectacle is ideology par excellence, because it exposes and manifests in its fullness the essence of all ideological systems

the spectacle is the loss of the unity of the world

The spectacle is the acme of ideology, for in its full flower it exposes and manifests the essence of all ideological systems

The spectacle is a permanent opium war waged to make it impossible to distinguish goods from commodities

The Spectacle is an entertainment force that has a major impact on the economy, our business models, and societal culture

The Spectacle is the political environment in which we are subject to being mere spectators

The spectacle is a means of unification

the spectacle is quite willing to bribe the groups most likely to be hostile to the intentions and methods of industry

But the spectacle is nothing other than the sense of the total practice of a social-economic formation

The Spectacle is not just a collection of images. It is the medium of communication between images and is the means by which the real world is interpreted

the Spectacle is the dominion of assholes because all assholes love spectacular domination

The spectacle is activity become passive

The expense of publishing the Spectacle is under $100 a month

The spectacle is another facet of money, which is the abstract general equivalent of all commodities

The spectacle is described in theory as everywhere, with no boundary to its insidiously embracing circumference

The Spectacle is scrambling and re-sequencing itself with new simultaneities and juxtapositions

The spectacle is as dramatic and arresting, as beautiful, as I could ever have imagined. It's so overwhelming it's almost too much to take in at first

the spectacle is an elaboration of commodification theory that captures the mechanisms which allow for capital's deepening penetration

The spectacle is mainly visual so an understanding of French is probably not essential and the story and speeches are deliberately simple

the spectacle is cancelled before its beginning, the tickets are refunded

The spectacle is self-generated, and it makes up its own rules

The Spectacle is the terrestrial realization of ideology

the spectacle is not too exciting, but even still it contains a subjective philosophical issue, or at least a dilemma

The Spectacle is the parent of these children

The spectacle is . . . well, spectacular

the Spectacle is considered one of the greatest works of political and cultural theory

the spectacle is, to me, just as awe-inspiring

The spectacle is conceived and carried out only by the voluntaries

The spectacle is fabulous