I get my inspiration from… Erik Satie, most notably his piano work.

Erik Satie, 17 May 1866 – 1 July 1925, (rest in peace sir) is my favorite composer. In fact, I like his music and life (I can’t separate the two) so much that some of my friends poke fun at my admiration. That’s cool, people like my music, I live with a wonderful woman in a dope apartment, I eat good everyday and I look great in a suit. Make fun all you want puppies, I’m good – however I reserve the right to resent you for an unreasonable amount of time.

Anyways, Erik Satie! Around the time me and Mike McGuire dropped “A Simple Night Of Dancing With The Boys And Girls Club”, I met this girl who wanted to sing on my beats. She couldn’t sing though. Never made any music, but she emailed me Saties’ piano triptych “Three Gymnopedies” as a means to inspire my beats. Holy shit did they ever. I listened to them, especially part one and three on repeat for an entire summer. I hated my job, and my lunch breaks were spent sitting in a park, contemplating how much I hated everything. Then I’d put on some Satie and life was marvelous for twenty minutes. Mike McGuire turned out to like Satie as well and put me on to more of his piano stuff. Admittedly I wasn’t really feeling his orchestral stuff, though Satie did provide music for a ballet with sets designed by a young Pablo Picasso, who was never called an asshole.

Portrait of Satie by Pablo Picasso.

So, I picked up a record of Satie piano joints played by Aldo Ciccolini (considered to be the best performer of his works).

There were like 60 tracks, all beautiful. Some of my favorites: “True Flabby Preludes”, “Three Pieces In The Shape Of A Pear (there are five!)” and “Desiccated Embryos”! Then I learned a little about the guy. You might recognize this one, “Trois Gymnopedies”:

Dude was wild. Grew up in France and got tired of music as the main centerpiece of a night. He invented “furniture music,” which was to be played in the background. Brian Eno invented Ambient music as a continuation of this idea. Brian Eno is a whole ‘nother essay. Peep this:

Erik Satie hung out with weirdoes, owned 12 identical velvet suits, barely composed with a piano, invented his own religion, and only had one relationship (with artist Suzan Valadon who painted this lovely portrait of him):

Usually when one reads a piece of music, there is an instruction on how to play. Usually normal stuff like, “play slow,” “heavy on the pedal,” “with emotion.” Satie was a little wilder with it, hoping to evoke strange reactions which would affect the performance. One of his famous instructions: “To be played like a nightingale with a toothache.” He also wrote a piece, “Vexations”, which takes 22 hours to play. Every once in a while, a team of ambitious college kids will try to play it. Silly ambitious college kids, never cease to amaze me.

When he passed away, his friends found a closet filled with broken umbrellas, two broken pianos, mad cigar boxes filled with thousands of tiny drawings and several unpublished compositions in various pockets of his velvet suits.

One more story… Supposedly, when Stravinski had his composition “The Rite of Spring” performed for the first time, there was a riot. People couldn’t deal with the music and the images and people started yelling and leaving. In the midst of all the craziness, Satie, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel were standing on their seats screaming “Genius!”

I leave you with Alice Coltrane (rest in peace ma’am) performing the best part of “Rite of Spring.” You can download that here.

Best,

Scott