Who are you favourite composers?

[v-un-v]

Are writing lists a typical 'blokey' thing to do? Are some men keen on writing lists because some of them have an 'autistic streak' in them?

psst- know any good M$ Excel spreadsheets?? Do I find them in the darkened room out the back of the comic shop??

[Kassen]

He he he. In a way it *is* kinda like the sad guy who never goes out but meticulously graded all the faces of the girls in his class's book of names and contact adresses.

I wanted to do a list as well for a moment (of compositions, mind you) but realised that when it comes down to I don't realy like those people on a compositional level at all, even if some of them are *also* very good composers.

[v-un-v]

[mosc]

Well, there are guys that make lists of girls and actually go out with them. They aren't pervy, just well organized.

Let's stay positive. Lists like this one of favorite composers aren't bad, IMHO. I have seen some names on this list that I have never heard of. If I look them up and listen to their music then I've gotten a lot out of the list. Seeing the mix of classical and pop musicians is also very interesting to me.

As for The Beatles liberating the recording studio, I think there is a good argument for that. Before their more experimental albums, the recording studio was pretty music used just as that, a place to record music. The Beatles were one of the first pop groups, and certainly the most influential, that used the recording studio as a creative instrument, making music that was more than just a reproduction of a live performance. We take this for granted today, but it was something very revolutionary at the time.

[Kassen]

Were the Beatles even BORN when Raymond Scott started leading his band from the controll-room while manipulating the sound? That wasn't "pop" but that's not a fair criterium since "pop" didn't exist back then. He certainly wrote popular music for his days though and it was featured on prime-time radio.

[mosc]

I think they were born by then. They didn't invent anything about using the recording studio, AFAIK, but they did make it popular and changed everyone's perception of what to do in a studio. Being the first doesn't always correlate to being influential.

Pop is a lot older than Raymond Scott. Bing Crosby and his contemporaries were Pop - always on the radio and selling lots and lots of records. People who wrote the songs they sang, Irving Berlin, Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rogers and Hart, and many many others were writing Pop songs. Before that, Pop music was released as sheet music. The Hit Parade was around in the 30s, AFAIK.

Anyway, Berlin, Gershwin et. al. were certainly composers of music no matter what you call it.

[elektro80]

Beatles? UK! England!

I would say that by the time Beatles "reinvented" the studio, this had already happened and the concept was well known already. Ever heard of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop? This was as a huge thing back then. Of course it was not well known in the US, but all us middleaged euro dudes were exposed to this. The BBC was also pretty keen on telling how fab the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was. The BBC ruled.

It might rightfully be claimed that Beatles reinvented what studiotime was about, but this is not completely correct either. By that time, this was also being done by many acts. Contemporary jazz acts had already been writing the music in the studio as well as reinventing the sound of jazz because the tools were there. By the late 60s they were all doing this.

More correct is it to say that new tech from the mid 50s to the mid 70s changed everything. As for pop, the industry was big into making dud simulacra acts as phony as many still are today. TV made this happen. In those cases the studio was the working space for creating the new artist/product. One thing that did happen in the late 60s was that LA suddenly became the powerhouse of the US pop industry. This is more significant than it may seem at first.

[elektro80]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radiophonic_Workshop

The main thing to understand about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop is that at the time, the BBC told us this was about the studio and the tools in the studio. In a studio you could create something from scratch. And they did.
A common joke at the time amongst musicians and studio engineers was that ( re inexperienced musicians and up-and-coming producers would act ( in standard commercial recording studios..))" people came in and behaved like the sodding place was the frigging BBC Radiophonic Workshop".
This was a common story by spring 1964.

[Kassen]

[Kassen]

[elektro80]

There is pop and there is pop. Definitions..

It is quite common over here to say that pop is what happened to the "popular music" industry in the mid/late 50s. Affordable vinyl, affordable players, radio, an emerging youth culture that distinctly set it apart from the mature markets and yes.. emerging export markets of size.

[elektro80]

[Kassen]

[elektro80]

Jazz isn´t really free form. Even polish free jazz sounds like "free jazz" which is "free form" - played by jazz musicians. I have some minor problems with jazz both as an ideology and as a component in hybrid styles.

[Kassen]

[elektro80]

[Kassen]

[elektro80]

[Kassen]

[blue hell]

[Kassen]

Like in "jazzy"-anything-electronic from the 90's with a few notable exceptions.

There is some good stuff, of cource.

[elektro80]

[elektro80]

[blue hell]

I could imagine some jazz rock in scales like the ones Carlo is experimenting with, that might just work.

I hate it though when the flock of copper kicks in, usually.

Anyway, whenever a new style fashion emerges the music dies, seems to, at least.

[elektro80]