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William Robinson
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  • Austin, Texas
  • United States
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William Robinson

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William Robinson added 5 pieces.
October 23
Just arrived: Terry Riley's "The Harp of New Albion", 2-CD (Celestial Harmonies). A work of transcendent beauty & spirituality, performed by Terry Riley on a Bosendörfer Imperial grand piano tuned in "just" intonation, from C# to C#1: C#...1/1 D.....
October 23
The real and most ancient goal of all musical expression is and was ecstatic experience, a dramatic peak. It started out as improvisatory. This is accomplished in different ways. Bach's Prelude No. 1 does it with a static rhythmic pattern, using d...
October 23
The real and most ancient goal of all musical expression is and was ecstatic experience, a dramatic peak. It started out as improvisatory. This is accomplished in different ways. Bach's Prelude No. 1 does it with a static rhythmic pattern, using d...
October 23
Stockhausen's "Song of the Youths", "Studie Nr. 1" and "Studie Nr. 2" are available in the U.S. on a CD titled "Adventures In Sound."
October 23
William Robinson updated their profile photo
October 22
The stench of Humanity
October 22
Chatham's music seems much more positive than Glen Branca. That's a good thing. As I understand it, Chatham was there first, but Branca politicked his way to fame first. There was friction between Branca and, of all people, John Cage. Chatham's ea...
August 10

Profile Information

short bio
My main instrument is electric guitar; I also play harmonica, fiddle, and enough piano to scrape by. I have a B.F.A.

William Robinson's Blog

William Robinson

Schoenberg's Five Pieces For Orchestra Op. 16 (1909)

For me, one of the most evocative pieces of music, of all time, is from Schoenberg's 5 Orchestral Pieces, op. 16 (1909; 1949 version); the second movement, "Vergangenes".

About midway-through, a little figure played on the celesta emerges; it repeats, over and over, like a broken music-box, or child's toy; reminiscent of Tchaikovsky's use of the celesta in "Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairies";

...only here, it sounds more obsessive, more foreboding; as if one were going over and over the same tho… Continue

Posted on July 23, 2009 at 8:24pm —

William Robinson

Bypassing Your Own Ego

Cage did it; Eno did it. Can we do it? Sure...there should be millions of ways to remove your own interfering personality from a process.
(1) Create systems that are automated, that run by themselves. Tape loops of various lengths have done this; If you have on old sequencer, you can create loops of things.
(2) Remove decision-making from the process as much as possible. Prepare a set of "arbitrary instructions" on cards, like Eno's "Oblique Strategies," with meta-ideas like "Repeat a redundancy… Continue

Posted on July 19, 2009 at 11:00pm —

William Robinson

http://forte.music.unt.edu/?q=node/261

I have heard Dave Liebman and Gil Goldstein's jazzed-up version of West Side Story, and it drew me in to the realization that Leonard Bernstein wrote some great songs of lasting quality.

I'm grateful for the fact that I grew up listening to my mother play & sing the great American songbook: Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer; as I grew up & became interested in playing jazz standards, I even managed to turn her on to a song that had somehow slid by her radar, "Stella By Starlight.… Continue

Posted on July 4, 2009 at 6:13pm —

William Robinson

There is more new music on the horizon

There is more new music on the horizon, as I have finally reconfigured my setup with an external drive.

Posted on June 19, 2009 at 10:51am —

William Robinson

12-tone: Thematic or Not Thematic?

Remember Schoenberg's definition of 12-tone music (those of you with GOOD educations)? The phrase "twelve notes related only to each other" is worth pondering. If they are related ONLY to each other, not a "tonic" note or root, this makes the series not a MELODIC construct, but an INTERVALLIC construct; like a ratio, or relationship, not a "fixed" quantity as in a tonal melody. So the series can be like a template or shape, which remains more or less constant, pitch-wise, anyway. It is seriously… Continue

Posted on May 14, 2009 at 9:26pm —

Comment Wall (24 comments)

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At 10:20am on October 23, 2009, William Robinson said…
Thanks to all positive comments. I've been away from the site for some time.
At 8:56am on August 28, 2009, Dick Metcalf, aka Rotcod Zzaj said…
Hi, William - VERY cool music... thanks for adding me & will look forward to more... hope you enjoy some of mine, too...
At 2:07pm on April 6, 2009, Johnny & Faith said…
Like the guitar looping. I'm looking into one of those Lexicon Jam Mans for myself. I'll bet it's fun!
 
 

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