Magnetic Fields

(And no, I don’t mean the Surrealist book of automatic writing… though that is slightly relevant too, re: constraint or lack thereof.)

A brief quote from Stephen Merritt of the Magnetic Fields in an otherwise uninteresting article in the Boston Pheonix:

“I’ve always liked having some sort of format to work within. I like artificial constraints. If there are no constraints, then I make my own up. This time I tried to use no synthesizers, have everything be hand played, use hardly any reverb, and be the only singer. I wrote all the songs in keys so that I’d be at the top of my range rather than the bottom, like I usually am. I tried to make it a soft-rock record - in the vein of a Roberta Flack or the Carpenters - but I didn’t stick closely enough to that for anyone to really notice. But it doesn’t have any distorted guitars or big, oil-drum-style drum kits. And I’m not a screamer. If I could sing like Bon Scott, you’d had heard it by now.”

(link courtesy of Largehearted Boy)

Another thing I’ve been thinking about, formal constraint in music, not just lyrically. I’ve got a new 4 track and some music software, so maybe I can come up with something in the future. (Lipogrammatic music!?)

Tags: Constraint, Music

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