photo by emily lacy

good news everyone! ‘metal circles//sound spheres’ (my solo amplified cymbal improvisation) is going to become a record, and it will be released on pfMentum, a label specializing in west coast creative music. my soon-to-be label mates include jeff kaiser, vinny golia, grampus, michael vlatkovich, and steuart liebig.

i’ll be going down to the university of california at san diego’s recording studio this thursday, february 9, to record the material with jeff kaiser engineering the session. it’s going to be a crazy sounding album. i will post more information as more information exists.

here’s the performance from july 2009 at the hammer museum in los angeles. its an mp3.

also, my drumset turns four years old this week. hooray.

greetings. here’s tentative start dates of some upcoming things i’m involved in that will be posted here as they get nearer.

february 24: i’ll have a piece going into a gallery in bristol, england as part of a show called ‘B E A U T Y W I L L D E S T R O Y Y O U R M I N D’  that my friend edward lawrenson is curating. it will feature two other artists whom we met on residency in finland, jeanne de petriconi and andreanne fournier.

march 25: i’ll have a piece going into a series called ‘the Art of Music’ taking place at the bleicher/hamilton gallery in santa monica. the series ‘presents criminally overlooked music and sound options[...]‘ i don’t know what i’m making yet, but the tagline is meaty enough for a start.

april 2: c4t4–chord four flares out through the southwest for our fourth self-produced tour, and we’ll be whittling down the now rather large list of pieces for our next record. weeeee.

mid-april: ‘house concert:’ a series of solo improvised percussion improvised percussion concerts in peoples houses. that is not a typo, as whatever is in the house will become what it always wanted: percussion. this will be a ton of fun for me. the event is being aided by, if not given a blessing by, machine project and the center for integrated research and exhibition.

various: short improvised pieces for drums and/or cymbals, posted on the internets. i shall call them ‘other drum solos.’

various: a rhythm study of mine will be published in modern drummer magazine in the coming months. details forthcoming.

various: more musings posted here.

thanks for checking in. meanwhile, i’m off to university of nevada at las vegas to play music with otto ehling, for his masters’ graduation recital. no shortage of tassels for those mortarboards.

bonus: anyone who knows the title expression gets a postcard with music on it. email me@colinwoodfordmusic.com

double bonus: east coast contemporary classical powerhouse bang on a can is celebrating their silver anniversary and giving away their latest record for free download. i’m not on it. yet. get it here.

somewhen or other:

partial list of days it is today

all dates ‘m/d/y’ unless noted

–gregorian (pope gregory, also of gregorian chant fame), solar:

12/31/2011

–julian (caesar, that is), solar:

12/18/2011

–hebrew, solar-lunar:

10/5/5772

–islamic, lunar:

2/5/1433

–french republican (failed, but became the metric system), astronomical:

4/1.10 [tenth day of first 10 day week of the season]/220

–ethiopic, solar:

4/21/2004

–mayan long count, mostly solar:

baktun 12 . katun 19 . tun 19 . uinal 0 . kin 4

this leads me to the first item on my

list of things to overcome in (gregorian) 2012:

1) clocks

because they’re a waste of time

2) inspiration

because if i’m always inspired, i don’t have to wait for inspiration

party:

last but not least, why waste a perfectly good opportunity to have fun with people you like? i’m playing a house concert with the sogo takeover tonight at

2019 b Havemeyer lane, redondo beach, 90278

this is the back house, we go on at 11.

i hope the new year is better for you and yours than the one that we’re getting out of, and that you fumble through auld lang syne for many happy years.

post script: if you don’t believe me about the dates, go here or here.

not my photo

also not my photo

a billboard near my house for the famous burger reads: ‘built for your cravings.’ that’s as close to truth in advertising as i’ve seen. the burger is designed and, crucially, consistently executed with enough fat, salt, and sugar to provide an extremely flavorful and instantly gratifying food experience, with ingredients sourced and purchased in such a way as to make it profitable even at $.99 per protein pouch. there are also mcdonalds’ everywhere —ten within three miles of me as i write—so getting a fix is easy; and mcdonalds is still the undisputed heavyweight champion of fast-food, so the branding is constant. for some folks, out of either want or necessity the burgers are a staple food, but no one could reasonably argue they’re eating healthily.

think now of a lady gaga song, any lady gaga song. the preceding paragraph functions almost word for word as an analogy for the song, including the pricing in many cases. i am not denouncing either product—they’re following formulas they know will work to give people what they presumably want. i will eat the burger and listen to the song, and will not pretend to be offended by them on the grounds that there’s vastly better/healthier/more thoughtfully made food/music. of course there is, and i eat/listen to them as well. her song and their burger exist in a class of their own; ‘it is what it is’ my dad sometimes says. i submit that a lady gaga song and a mcdonalds cheeseburger–substitutions at no extra cost, for better or worse—are culturally equivalent phenomenon.

apologies, i could not find a photo credit

Earlier this morning, November 22, 2011, the drummer Paul Motian passed away at 80.

The painter Piet Mondrian managed to describe how i experienced Paul’s music in the same way as he justified his paintings

I believe it is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true.

Paul Motian made true music. Not in any abstract sense of the word, either; the music was honest and told the truth, but was also true in and of itself, on its own terms, and for its own sake.

Mr Motian’s music gave me the greatest gift art can give a person—it changed the way i looked at the world, and how i related to my part of it. The recording that most improved my life, is a record called either ‘You took the words right out of my heart’ or ‘Live at the Village Vanguard’ with Paul Motian, Bill Frisell, and Loe Lovano. The most i can think to say without being strident or saccharine is that this album will more than repay any time you spend with it. Like Mondrian, Motian’s evolution from his early recordings to his last, is a beautiful record of a human assiduously refining his art, and his craft, documentation we are all lucky to have even second-hand access to.

i count myself very lucky to have seen him play in several groups, including the aforementioned trio. aside from the occasional person trying to snap along, Motian held a terrifically overcrowded new york club full of people coming off of work transfixed on music the likes of which some of them did not know existed or could exist. and for him, this was routine. he is (not was, for his records are still ours to explore) a beautiful and genuinely singular voice in art, in music, in jazz, and in drumming. we are the richer for him, and i stand in solidarity with the artistic community in offering condolences and very deep thanks.

mondrian: broadway boogie-woogie

two mondays ago chord four wrapped a short tour up the coast.

we played

photo by jamie chestnut

we clinicked

photo by brandon sherman

we played

photo by

we hung out. a lot. all evidence was lost.

we took pictures

photo by brandon schmidt

we played

photo by mike lockwood

it was fun.

here’s a new track of mine we did for this tour called superficialityexpialidocious:

to those of you who supported us this tour, thank you very much.

also, i had a sound art piece installed for the long beach soundwalk. check it out in the previous entry!

here’s photos of 7 out of 15 pieces displayed at the long beach soundwalk. the pictures were taken alternately by sasha swedlund and peter woodford. sasha also fabricated the pieces from my specifications, because i’m a printing lab dunce, and installed them, because i was on tour. many thanks to sasha. they were placed three or four to a block, along the route of the soundwalk.

the event as a whole did good business this year, and people seemed to receive these pieces very well: they were curious, and apparently small children were mimicking the suggested sounds with their mouths. complete success.

admittedly this format doesn’t give nearly the same experience, but i hope you like it anyhow. thanks kindly and cheers.

a version of this piece may be shown in a group exhibition in england later this year or early 2012

hey y’all.

planning and booking this tour was a bear, but we made it. it’s a little tiny tour, but it looks like its going to be a blast. here’s the dates:

chord four tour three

28 Sept 2011 – Steynberg Gallery – San Luis Obispo, CA – 8pm – $10 All Ages

30 Sept 2011 – Jazz Station - Eugene, OR – 8pm – $10 – All Ages

1 Oct 2011 – Shine – Sacramento, CA – 8pm – No Cover – All Ages

2 Oct 2011 – Creekside Bakery – Novato, CA – 1pm – No Cover – All Ages

10 Oct 2011 – Blue Whale – Los Angeles, CA – 9pm – $10 – All Ages

also: the long beach soundwalk is coming up on on october 1st, and i have a piece in it! i will be on tour, so thank yous are in order to my parents, sasha wedlund, nick dynice, and the rest of the FLOOD group people. the piece is called ‘what if it sounded like’ and it’s a series of 16 vinyl stickers with text on them asking ‘what if it sounded like you were walking on [material].’ they will demarcate the route of the walk every 50 or so feet. this does make me the guy at the soundwalk not doing sound; at least, not providing you the sound. i’m very excited to be involved, and very interested in presenting a completely ignorable opportunity to be curious.

if you’re in or near any of these places on any of these days, or know someone who might be, please share!

thanks for stopping by. go here to hear the second free download from chord four, to help promote our upcoming tour. this weeks is ‘Jane McMillan’ by andrew conrad. tri-melodica-madness!!!

also, chord four now has an official website, for you to register your opinions at, to hear our music at, to read our press at, and whatever else you could possibly want! check it out.

chord four is preparing for our third self-produced tour. news will be posted here as news exists. one of the things we’re doing to celebrate/promote is to give away one live track per week from one of our previous two tours. this is the first of those. two pieces of mine– balloon dance and the woman that tells you.

this is also the official announcement of the still-in-progress ‘works’ page on this here internet-hub. i’ll be uploading scores for all sorts of different things, and some pictures of the more object-oriented art. you can get the scores for these two tracks here.

giving music away is not a very good way to make money with music. there’s two overarching schools of thought: 1) never do what you’re good at for free because selling your art short hurts you and others like you in the long run. 2) give as much away as possible, and make money where you can, so that more people hear about you and hear your music. i, like most folks, fall somewhere inbetween, and play it basically by ear. i personally and this band groupily (have at thee, grammarians!) are not receiving support/audience/exposure from the musicians union, chamber music america, california arts council, managers, agents, etc. and for various reasons. that’s okay, i’m/we’re not saying we’re in any way entitled to it, but it does mean we have more work to do.

if you like the track(s) above, pass them along. there’s more chord four here.