released January 10, 2022

Recorded 2018-2022 at Phantom Airship 7, Portland, OR, USA

All sounds made and organized by Greg Eric Segal, who is self-important enough to not only have a middle name, but also to sometimes use it. In true ZZ Von Schnerk fashion, he also did the cover and everything else involved with the album. Will his villainy never cease etc.


What The Fuck Are You Doing? A very short guide to what the fuck I am doing by Greg Eric Segal.

Written with a sense of necessity and light guilt after the recent release of "Until Rising".

This guide is only in reference to what the fuck I'm doing musically.

I felt I needed to write this so that I will not leave people with no clue, which will probably lower my number of listeners and fans. I could say it was about something more lofty, but why? If people can't understand the music, many may listen, probably many more won't.

Think about it this way. On the original release of Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange", there was no glossary for the (invented/fictional) Nadsat slang the book is written in. The publishers made him put it in. If you've never read the book, you may not realize how serious a challenge not having that glossary would have been for any reader, even the most patient one. Even with the glossary, it's a difficult read.

Similarly, I give myself credit/blame for having come up with music that may be a little too weird for most people to make sense of. Why did I do this? How does this music work? How should it be listened to?

If you are a person who does not enjoy these kinds of explanatory writings, please skip this. I'll never know and it will not hurt my feelings.

So, number one, why did I do this?

It just came up and I went with it. When I describe the making of it, that will hopefully make a little more sense.

My father-in-law played with his local symphony when he was in his late teens. He was a fan of my work, and in fact helped me get started, outright giving me the money to get the equipment to start Phantom Airship, making CDs at home. Still, he wondered why I did what I did. One night he asked me, why did I make my music so complex? He thought I might make more headway with something more simple. So I told him the truth. I don't plan to do what I do. I used to, but at that point in time (and currently), that wasn't the case. I told him it was more like what would happen if I opened up my head with a can opener and poured the contents of my mind out. It's similar to how some abstract visual artists wll start something and then go with it. It starts with some little expression of an idea, and gets developed from there. And he understood what I meant.

How does this music work?

The easy answer is that it's stream of consciousness, but that's not quite right. There's a lot more to it. It starts with one stream of consciousness, improvised performance. It doesn't matter what instrument it's on. After that, instruments get added in reaction. Sometimes those performances are also improvised. Sometimes they're written to exactly fit with what's there.

There's no boundary in either direction as to how many instruments get added. If it sounds better with nothing, or sounds better with 20 extra tracks, that's what I'll do.

Anything is OK to edit. Edit out, edit together, moved from one place to another where it will work better. In that way it's somewhat like collage, except I have a lot more control over the basic qualities of each little piece. I am not limited to taking anything as is.

In terms of overall creation of pattern, it's a mix between free flowing and chunks of clearly recognizable solidity. It's not always easy to notice that there are often recurring themes in the free flowing parts, and that work with any other kind of part. Sometimes they converge or build up over many repetitions into something larger. Sometimes they are like ripples of one of the larger chunks, spreading in both directions with diminishing clarity.

I find two analogies to be pretty acurate and useful.

One is that it works like some dreams. It flows along, and only at points does it come into focus and make you feel like you are solid and right at home in it. Then the edges get fuzzy and you drift through it again.

It's also like a little flow of water. Things get swept along. Some get left behind, some new things get pulled in. Everything in it reacts with what surrounds it, and that determines where the floating or moving pieces go.

Some direct influences on how the patterns get created:

I have a CD of Wendy Carlos talking about her music and synthesis. One of the things she talked about was hocketing, a method used by some classical composers. Among the features of hocketing is the carrying of a melody line by more than one instrument. For example, one trumpet takes the first few notes of the line, another one on the other side of the stage takes the next few, then back to the first side of the stage with the next few notes, possibly by another instrument. I adapted this idea to suit my own approach. Much, if not most, of what's going on at any given moment in some of my pieces, reflects and interacts with what's going on around it. The lines of motion, both melodic and rhythmic, are all worked out in relation to everything else. You'll hear a line started by one instrument, carried on a few moments later by a different one, and then passed on to another and another, in a matter of seconds. Harmony and syncopation with that distributed line are carried out in the same way. You can either focus on how the individual parts interact, or pull back and hear how it all works together. With enough of that going on, plus all of it flowing with what preceded it and what follows it, being able to follow the music can be tough- even for me, and I made it.

Another direct, and earlier, influence is a painting technique used by Ivan Albright, which, as far as I know, is unique to him. He would mount his paintings on bendable lead frames. This enabled him to work on a section at a time, without seeing or referencing other sections. This gave his work a feeling that the perspective was both nowhere and everywhere at once. I use this same method. Take a small slice of the music and make some additions by reacting to what is immediately audible in that section. Then build from there, either working in that same section again, or pulling back and bridging that to the preceding or following section, or maybe ditching or editing it if it doesn't work.

There are other methods and ideas involved too, but I think the ones above are the most important.

How should it be listened to?

This may repeat some of the above, but I'll try to put it as simply as I can.

Pull back and listen to the whole. Don't get too hung up on the details. Let it just go on its own way and quietly observe. Doing something else while listening might be of benefit.

Focus on the details and how things interact. Enough of this and the whole will be more inteligible.

And that's basically it. I don't know if any explanation will help if you simply don't like the music. But maybe with an explanation that may change. Anyway, if you finished reading this, thank you, and I hope you enjoy the music.

GES, 1/13/22

Addendum:

Rhythmic Heresy

I like music from around the world and the ideas that come along with it, which are often very different from traditional western practices. Among these are different approaches to rhythm. Things get counted differently, have different feels. African cultures are usually cited where this is concerned, and with good reason. But there are some wild things in Vietnamese music, in Turkish music, in which the rests between phrases can be felt and repeated, but I'll be damned if I can count them in any way I'm aware of. So perhaps it's reasonable to assume they're not generally well known. In addition to the confusion listed above, my rhythmic sense includes all kinds of influences along these lines. I don't imagine that helps.

And now, this reference to John Cage, who said his problem with classical music was that there wasn't enough noise in it. I completely agree, and all kinds of noises are used in my music. The obvious use is for rhythm, which, as mentioned above, doesn't have to be countable by western standards in order to be felt. But pitched noise really does exist and is extremely useful and extremely wonderful.