I-Ching for music
I am starting a project to practice more with my gear. I will be doing 72 pieces of music inspired/motivated by the I-ching.
It's not so much an interpretation of all the symbols but a way to get me motivated to publish some tracks regularly. At the same time, it makes me read about the i-ching, which has a fascinating history.
It was written more than 5000 years ago, and it's still in usage today. This fact alone makes it interesting to study, but there is so much more. The aesthetic of the binary system seems to be more akin to an alien language than anything. It also inspired the Chinese written language, Taoism, and the Tao Te King.
At this point, I don't want to dive too deep into the scripture but use it as an inspiration and see what comes.
I started with the last character Wei Ji:
Which part of the poem talks about a fox crossing a river. Confident he can do it, he succeeds, but his tail gets wet. Not such a bad thing, but not such a good thing.
I also fell into a river years ago, confident or in a hurry to cross. I lost footing and went down the river, alone in a canyon in the wilderness of B.C. I can relate to the story of the fox. The fox also came into my dream this morning. Shapeshifting into small children, two foxes came into my home to seek protection from two grizzly bears.
Now let's see what music will come out of that.
My rules are:
- Make and release music inspired by one hexagram regularly
- Go through all 64 hexagrams and the 8 Trigrams of the elements
- There has to be an element of improvisation at the moment of recording
- I try to do one track a week when I can (no stress here)
- Start with the last hexagram, but then find a way to randomize the other
- No post-production of the track
- No purchased sample, only samples I create from field recording or recording my instruments
- Use any of the instruments I have:
- Mopho, Medusa, Octatrack, Model:Cycle for the electronics
- Violin, Tabla, Didgeridoo, Shakuhachi, Harmonium for the other instruments
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