The Future of Electronic Music

[David Westling]

I wrote this not long ago. Scroll down one article to find the one in question.

http://www.davidwestling.typepad.com/

[chuck]

This is a good concise statement of the general problems that face electronic music today and probably tomorrow also. Really the same kind of problems that have faced every kind of new music for as long as we have been out of the church and courting public approval.

Consider one of the biggest technological advancements in music prior to the 20th century, that being the assembling of a symphonic orchestra. The music composed for the Mannheim orchestra by Stamitz and the other composers of those days are not performed by the major symphony orchestras today with any regularity. It took decades to work out the problems of the large ensemble, playing styles, conducting and orchestration. They didn’t start to be ‘standardized’ until the end of the 18th century and that process continued for another 125 years.

In fact the beginnings of any style period usually produce art of questionable value while the aesthetics are being worked out. It’s only in the ‘History of …….” classes that we deal with the work of geniuses that started out. Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet are often forgotten in favor of Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, or Bill Haley and Buddy Holly put in a lesser light than the Beatles or Led Zepplin. I’m guessing that most ‘History of Electronic Music’ classes would put Wendy Carlos (at least her ‘Switched On Bach’) in this category. Its just that way, the first ones on the scene, regardless of genius, are over looked as the style or medium develops.

Electronic music has been around for at least 50 years. The same amount of time brought us Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. It took less time than that for Elvis and the Rolling Stones. But all of them, Franz to Mick were all working with established venues a certain performance expectation and the same 12 notes.

It’s difficult to say how all this will turn out, but without a doubt we are living in a very exciting time musically. As composers of electronic music we are a part of the great discussion going on of how to set the performance venue (concert hall, CD, downloads) the notation of this music (or is the performance the ‘notation’?), and the scope of emotion and/or purpose of electronic music. Personally I have great faith that the artistic side of human nature will someday take all these sounds and hear them as important. Exactly what that means will not be determined in our lifetimes, but it’s great to be a part of all this sound.

[Alexander]

I really enjoyed reading that! Gives me a lot to think about.

The article starts off with questioning a future for electronic music, but describes a number of viewpoints of the past. It would be nice to compare how people saw "a future" for electronic music back then, on both a spiritual and technical level, to technical means today and the state of the current electronic music scene, which I personally think has a long future ahead.

I also think the last phrase:

[bachus]

[David Westling]

[David Westling]

I meant to highlight a small portion of your thoughtful post, chuck. Sorry about the problem. I most of all wanted to comment on your idea that the early efforts in a given new medium are usually minor. It's true, we are too close to the problem, as Dr. Morbius was to his "problem" in Forbidden Planet. No doubt Louis and Bebe Barron's music for that film will sound rather quaint to 22nd century ears, but I can't help but believe that it will be viewed as an important step away from the naturalistically-rooted musics of the past and toward the new subjectivity, the "music of the mind" that has experienced such a troubled birth along with many of the other features of the new radical subjectivism. (I would say the beginning of this trend dates from around 1770 but not really unmoored from its naturalistic roots until the late nineteenth century and still not a completed project.) This is when our concept of the universe as objective reality began to fall apart...we owe it all to the Kantian Noumena! It all dovetails, from Poincare's mathematical skepticism to Alfred Jarry's science of exceptions to Duchamp's visceral abstraction and on to Surrealism.

[(*The Noonward Race*)]

I think an interesting thing to note is that, at least superficially, over time the focus of music has been different in certain ways, like initially it was focused on ryhthmn (primitive drumming) then, harmony (classical music) now we're exploring timbre. At least kind of.

[Wout Blommers]

I think Chuck has a very important issue here... TIME, or Zeit-Geist

The Manheimer concept of the symphonically orchestra took a rather long time coming to be, I believe about 300 years. Electronic music concepts took lesser time.

Could there be some limitations to the human mind and spirit concerning time to conquer the new techniques (which David already brought up), the concepts, the possibilities of the sounds, etc...

I'm still wondering why most synthesizer owners want their instruments to sound like conventional musical instruments? Why not use and create 'never heard before' sounds? Why use it in conventional composing concepts (e.g. drum part, bass part, lead...)?

Why do synth owners sell their instrument so easily? I can't imagine the owner poured all the possibilities out of the instrument. A saxophone player will keep to his instrument much longer, although the saxophone has less possibilities then a synthesizer...

Just some thoughts...

Wout

[seraph]

[Kassen]

I warmly recomend this article;

http://www.crackle.org/composingthenow.htm

[bachus]

[David Westling]

Well, I remember a phrasing by Walter Carlos back around '72 who said something to the effect of, what if you could invent a synthesized voice that had the basic characteristics of, for example, a bassoon, but better, in terms of expressivity and overall control? This is the kind of ambitious project that Carlos and others interested in this line of development were on about. Aside from all that work, creating an envelope for every partial and having, I don't know, say 30 VCOs for every voice with all the attendant filtering and other necessary modulation, and all this for what might just be a mildly evolutionary step forward when the times call for something, shall we say, a bit stronger? Oh no, my political side is showing again. As counterintuitive as this next might sound, we live in revolutionary times. What did Virginia Woolf say, in the year 1910 everything changed? Only what exactly changed? Any backsliding that might have happened since 1940 doesn't change the basic reality of the possibilities unlocked a century earlier. The old instrumentations, tonalities and cadences keep us tied to the discredited past.

[bachus]

[Antimon]

[Wout Blommers]

In a way I think the future of the electronic music is a very bright one, because the complete musical constellation isn't aware of its possibilities. The development of the electronic musical instruments went on that fast, people couldn't get familiar with it. Instrument builders figure out a technical possibility without realizing if there is any (musical) creative use for it...

Another feature of todays electronic music is the fact the composer is mostly also the performer. The only way to get a larger audience is by the media, like CD. There is no way yet to get a well working communication between a composer and a performer. This will develope itself too.

Wout

[bachus]

[bachus]

[zacharias]

[mosc]

[David Westling]

[seraph]

[David Westling]

[seraph]

[seraph]

[Wout Blommers]

Hmm...

I have a feeling this discussion has be taken place in the beginning of the 20th century, one hundred years ago.

I oppose always using terms of one cultural practise applied on another. Par example, what is surrealistic music? By nature all music is surrealistic, because it has no other correlation with reality then sound waves, apart of some 19th century romantic symphonies. Musique concrète is surrealistic.

The next text has the basis the fact most electronic sounds produced, nowadays, are emulations of existing sounds, mostly conventional.

Besides my remark about the much to fast implementation of the electronic possibilities in our culture, I want to look at an art form in which almost the same thing happened: painting and drawing opposed to photography. There is a thesis photography 'released' painting of the demand to be realistic and historical. Painters could be artist instead of craftsmen... and all those 'isms could flourish
Photography, in its turn, received its own rules and restrictions and in the second half of the last century most art-photographs were as surrealistic as hell, where painting had left that road for some decades. The only place one can find surrealism nowadays is in the video clip promoting hit songs.

Does the electronic music, a technical way to produce an art form, play the same part as photography? Certainly not. It doesn't free the artist from making music as he really likes, because it was always possible.

What are the differences between conventional music and electronic music, just a summery to look what is going on at this moment. (I leave out things like distribution to the audience, like CD, radio, etc)

CM = expensive to produce; EM = much cheaper to produce (nowadays).
CM = mostly group bound; EM = mostly individual.
CM = variable in quality; EM = constant in quality (concerning a musical piece).
CM = visual highly actractive; EM = visual most boreing
CM = a long history in which conventions were formulated; CM = very view by all known conventions.
CM = tends to get more free every day; EM = tends to emulate CM...

Just a stop...

Wout