Day 43 – Jamming in Bangkok

April 6, 2019 · Posted in 1st Principles, mindset · Comment 

Today I rode my bicycle to EQ Studios to jam with my friend Sam & his friend Brad. Music improvisation is possible because of first principles. We followed a few basic rules so we can spontaneously make music without planning. The key point of first principles is anything that can be made or done can be assembled from a very small set of fundamental components and rules repeated over & over. This is the idea of fractals.

To add to the improvisational aspect I took the video of riding my bicycle to the studio and speed it up to match the length of the music. You can see and hear all of this because the video is composed of pixels, tiny dots of 3 colors arranged in a grid so you see the picture. You hear the music because it is also composed of a string of numbers or digits representing the sound level in very small time slices so when sent as electric impulses to the speaker it vibrates reproducing the original sound.

Riding a bicycle is also done following very simple rules. You balance by making small adjustments of the handle bar left or right. You also make very small adjustments of your body weight to help keep your balance. You move forward by pushing down on the peddle, first the right then the left. A bunch of small actions repeated over and over to achieve a fluid result.

All of the vehicles on the street in Bangkok are also improvising. They watch each other and adjust their current and future actions to spontaneously form coordinated motions to get where each wants without hitting anything.

When you look you can see the 1st Principles operating behind everything.