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bachus
Joined: Feb 29, 2004
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 Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 7:03 am Post subject:
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| dewdrop_world wrote: |
If you smash an icon in the privacy of your own home, and nobody finds out about it or cares, what has it accomplished? :p
James |
An impediment easily overcome. All one has to do is post ones icon smashing/dissolving/subverting on the web. (You have listened to my music, right?  )
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kkissinger
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| Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 1:48 pm Post subject:
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| elektro80 wrote: | | Re Newton, his take on science... |
We know that Newton's view of the cosmos, while useful at slow speeds and distances, is not an accurate view (gravity does not work instantaneously at a distance).
However, Newton will remain one of the pivotal figures in science because he brought us the concept that the laws of nature that affect us on the earth are the same laws that govern the whole universe.
Newton said that the mathematics that describes the fall of an apple from a tree is the same mathematics that governs the orbits of the planets.
Einstein changed the math -- however reenforced and expanded the notion that the laws of nature are the same everywhere in the universe. In fact, this unification is one of the fundamental principles of relativity. (That is, we can deduce someone else's measurements taken from elsewhere in space-time because they are governed by the same factors as we are. Einstein never said, "Everything is relative.")
Bach's music may transcend cultural bias due to its tools: imitation, rhythm, and and approach to consonance/dissonance that is equivalent to the naturally-occurring overtones.
Palestrina, Bach, Cage, and well... all of us... are subject to the the same "laws of nature". When Bach played as many notes as possible by placing his forearms on an pipe organ keyboard we can be certain that it produced the same effect as if you or I do the same thing today.
(Did Bach experience this sound? Yes, indeed! Whenever he inspected a newly built pipe organ, he did this to see if the organ's air reservoir was adequate for peak loads. (Are the storage caps big enough?  )
Of course, nature provides other sounds that are complex -- say wind, waterfalls, or bell-tones. What does electronic music give us, then, that nature does not?
Well, for starters, electronic music allows us to work with pure sine waves, and well... other simple waveforms that rarely are heard "in nature". Also, electronic instruments allow one to combine timbres in ways that would be difficult with acoustical instruments. For instance, an electronic voice can morph from one thing into another. A flute note can morph into thunder, a trumpet can be plucked, a cymbal crash can happen in reverse.
Perhaps electronic instruments give us a few new colors to work with, however it gives us a huge pallet on which to combine the colors. And it puts this power into the hands of people who NEVER would have had such access in times gone by.
Case in point: If I decided that I want to write a symphony and hear it performed I could simply do it with my K2600. The lack of access to a symphony-orchestra is no longer an "excuse".
The phrase "limited only by the imagination" is a cliche -- however this phrase by-in-large applies to modern synthesis.
These are good times to be a composer. (And I didn't even talk about FM and multi-temperament).
Last edited by kkissinger on Wed Feb 07, 2007 1:50 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Wout Blommers
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| Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 1:48 pm Post subject:
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Let me throw another fish in the pond...
Is todays electronic music developed from the pioneers of electronic music, like Schaefer, Henry and Stockhausen or from pop music, like ELP, Beatles and Pink Floyd?
I know, another short turn, but they are always so clear...
Wout |
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Wout Blommers
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| Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 2:07 pm Post subject:
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| kkissinger wrote: | | Palestrina, Bach, Cage, and well... all of us... are subject to the the same "laws of nature". |
This is nonsense... Sorry...
What are the laws of nature in the E-minor chord?
Sound and laws of nature, alright, but art as a law of nature?
Gravity works everywhere on this planet, even on others, but how art is understood, it differs completely. We, as western listeners, have much difficulties in appreciating Tibetian ceremonial chanting, although falling out of the window is surely the same in Tibet.
| Quote: | | The phrase "limited only by the imagination" is a cliche ... |
Is the expression 'The imagination is the only limitation' the same...?
Is there any native speaker who can explain this to me, at a level as to a three years old child  I sense a difference...
Wout |
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Antimon
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| Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 2:41 pm Post subject:
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| Wout Blommers wrote: | Let me throw another fish in the pond...
Is todays electronic music developed from the pioneers of electronic music, like Schaefer, Henry and Stockhausen or from pop music, like ELP, Beatles and Pink Floyd?
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Warning: I'm not very well versed in musical science, encountering more "serious" music always via more popular stuff, but I can't resist these fascinating topics.
It's a bit difficult getting at what Wout's question actually means, but I guess that's partly the intention. Is "electronic music" stuff that music buffs at the university are making? Ministry? The wonderful diversity of this place (probably overlapping with both of the former)? Does "developed from" mean that electronic musicians honor and are inspired by those pioneers, or just that you can follow some kind of evolutionary line?
Sometimes I think this topic borders on the question whether humans have free will.
For me, music created without reference to other music isn't music, like a person brought up without contact with other humans isn't human, or maybe like a planet without life is something completely different than Earth. Starting all over with a blank slate will not create new music, it will create something else. It might be redefined as music later on, but only after it has been associated with some other reference point (either in other music or some physical form).
My answer to the question would be: all of those + buskers, bad electricians, stuff you hear at 365days, lots of others.
Electronic music today can be both (seemingly, at least) revolutionary and conservatory in form.
One difference between music and other arts seem to be that musicians have a need to push forward. Literature is comfortable with the same old words - there is always a new story to tell. In music any idea is old after it has been done once.
Enough rambling from my part.
/Stefan
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dewdrop_world
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| Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 3:07 pm Post subject:
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| Antimon wrote: | | One difference between music and other arts seem to be that musicians have a need to push forward. Literature is comfortable with the same old words - there is always a new story to tell. In music any idea is old after it has been done once. |
Old is not necessarily bad, and new is not necessarily good.
One of my grad school chums lamented that the pressure among composers to innovate means that composers are today less likely to refine a style or a set of techniques to a very high degree. Stylistically Bach's music is fairly narrow in scope compared to today's pomos, but he really dug into the depths of every genre he touched and drew life out of each one. We tend to skim the surface -- having "done" a b and c, we move on to d e and f without seeing what more we can get out of a or b. Maybe our sensibilities have grown coarse so that we wouldn't know refinement if it whacked us on the nose. (As if refinement would do such a thing... is that the problem then? We don't know it's there unless it delivers a bitchslap?)
Nature of the times perhaps, but it is something that has been lost.
James
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bachus
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| Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 3:54 pm Post subject:
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| Wout Blommers wrote: | Let me throw another fish in the pond...
Is todays electronic music developed from the pioneers of electronic music, like Schaefer, Henry and Stockhausen or from pop music, like ELP, Beatles and Pink Floyd?
I know, another short turn, but they are always so clear...
Wout |
I think todays electronic music developed from the pioneers of electronic music, like Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky.
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elektro80
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| Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 4:16 pm Post subject:
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Ussachevsky and Luening... say.. you know your Columbia-Princeton EMC quite well.
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bachus
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| Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 4:34 pm Post subject:
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| elektro80 wrote: | | Ussachevsky and Luening... say.. you know your Columbia-Princeton EMC quite well. |
Well, I was a student of a student and friend of Luening's. I once spent an afternoon talking with him. I had all his records
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elektro80
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| Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 4:40 pm Post subject:
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Perfect! 
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play
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| Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 8:08 pm Post subject:
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| David Westling wrote: | | One of the things not really touched upon yet in this discussion is the idea of the past becoming a wall against the future for the present, a concept I borrow from Wassily Kandinsky. For example, nowadays Impressionism is not seriously entertained by those who are interested in the evolution of art because it merely reiterates past radicality for a sensibility which uses it to justify its refusal to move on. This is why Dada is so significant, not as as style, but as an general approach to status-quo culture. One admires the clockwork precision of a Bach fugue, but doesn't this conception reflect the suppositions of that time around 1735 when the universe still seemed Euclidean? There is a dynamism in the nature of things, subtle, counter-intutitive, that Newtonian physics cannot apprehend. The old world is gone, and Rationalism has weighed anchor irrevocably. To reflect the new world founded on that which lies beyond traditional logic a new form was needed. This is what lies behind the innovations of Stravinsky, Varese, Ligeti. And now, it makes even less sense to return to something that existed before these pioneers changed the landscape forever. No, we have to go further out along this risky line, further into what had heretofore been thought of as madness... |
An interesting thing about Bach is that he was considered out of date during his own period. The styles in which he chose to compose were out of fashion but even today his music is alive and still contains elements that can't be easily categorized like so much genre music.
I think the relationship of a musician or artist to their predecessors is like that of a child with their parents. Generalizing here, we start out wanting to be like our parents, then go through a phase of total rebellion and then move into a mature place of self-confidence where we no longer care so much about whether or not we're like our parents.
If music is communication then what is being communicated? If it's emotion then the style or method is pretty irrelevant except from a purely technical interest. Much depends on the listener's perspective and the only ear the musician has is their own. |
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play
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| Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 8:13 pm Post subject:
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| dewdrop_world wrote: | | Antimon wrote: | | One difference between music and other arts seem to be that musicians have a need to push forward. Literature is comfortable with the same old words - there is always a new story to tell. In music any idea is old after it has been done once. |
Old is not necessarily bad, and new is not necessarily good.
One of my grad school chums lamented that the pressure among composers to innovate means that composers are today less likely to refine a style or a set of techniques to a very high degree. Stylistically Bach's music is fairly narrow in scope compared to today's pomos, but he really dug into the depths of every genre he touched and drew life out of each one. We tend to skim the surface -- having "done" a b and c, we move on to d e and f without seeing what more we can get out of a or b. Maybe our sensibilities have grown coarse so that we wouldn't know refinement if it whacked us on the nose. (As if refinement would do such a thing... is that the problem then? We don't know it's there unless it delivers a bitchslap?)
Nature of the times perhaps, but it is something that has been lost.
James |
Excellent point! I've learned the hard way not to dismiss things so easily. It sometimes takes work to appreciate a particular sound, vision or flavor but these are often the most rewarding. And as a creator, it's nearly impossible to introduce subtlety into a form without first mastering the form. |
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David Westling
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| Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 9:44 pm Post subject:
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| Quote: | | I think the relationship of a musician or artist to their predecessors is like that of a child with their parents. Generalizing here, we start out wanting to be like our parents, then go through a phase of total rebellion and then move into a mature place of self-confidence where we no longer care so much about whether or not we're like our parents. |
A better analogy than you know. Total noncomformism cannot prudently be left off of when one reaches 40, although that is the overwhelmingly predominant pattern. I believe I have reached the third plateau, not blindly accepting, not in knee-jerk rebellion, just outside. But this is not the same as starting off in blind acceptance, moving to unnuanced critique and gravitating back to a semi-accepting or semi-critical attitude. The problem is one of Authority (captial A), as Wilhelm Reich spelled out so cogently in his masterwork The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Some of us want a definitive end to fascism and all that attaches to it. |
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bachus
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 4:46 am Post subject:
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| David Westling wrote: | | .... Some of us want a definitive end to fascism and all that attaches to it. |
Yup! We sure do. And probably more than you know 
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seraph
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 7:45 am Post subject:
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is C Am Dm G a fascist chord progression 
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dewdrop_world
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:22 am Post subject:
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OK, let me play devil's advocate here...  ... my own view is more nuanced than this.
I always wondered why people think that writing music (or painting or sculpting etc.) in a certain way (as opposed to another) has the inherent power to topple or at least counteract fascistic tendencies (or more generally authoritarian structures). It never worked in the past; why would it start working now, just because some self-indulgent avant-gardist has written yet another politico-aesthetic manifesto?
Where are those factory workers singing Nono's tone rows?
I sometimes wonder if we want to accrue political import to our work out of fear of irrelevance. That is an entirely rational fear given modern culture as it is (a few minutes' glance at American Idol is sufficient to justify it). But I don't believe in making up significance out of thin air.
At the same time I am well aware of fascistic music. Today the one that scares me the most is (pseudo-)Christian "praise music."   Sieg heil Jesus indeed.
James
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mosc
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:26 am Post subject:
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Hmmm... I play a MIDI banjo. Where does that fit in?
(That was a rhetorical question - no need to answer.)
Anywho, but to the sorta topic. Bachus and I were discussing this last month. Well, sorta. Anyway, forget the instruments for a minute. It seems to me that there are two types of music - but maybe not purely.
One type (let's call it type 1) is music made with notes and rhythmic patterns. Most western music is in this category - classical, pop, folk, jazz, etc. This is usually made with voice and conventional instruments, but a lot of electronic music is in this type.
Another type (type 2) of music is something that I have trouble naming. This is sometimes called noise. The sources of this music can be synths (not patched to emulate melodic or chordal instruments), recorded sounds (musique concrete), conventional instruments played in very unconventional manners, and other creative instruments like metal placed on blocks of dry ice.
For sure these two types of music are not completely separated, but they do, I think, represent two major directions in electro-music today. (Forgive my use of the somewhat undefined term electro-music. I use it to describe the music that comes from the members of this community which is pretty broad).
It seems like we are talking a lot about type 1 and type 2 music here, more than the instruments themselves.
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play
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:33 am Post subject:
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| Oh yes, art has never stopped fascism. The best it can aspire to is to not die under authoritarian rule. This, I think, it does very well. I think D. Westling was making a point about authoritarianism in spheres other than the nation, for instance, in the artist's mind, at least that's how I understood it. |
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mosc
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:45 am Post subject:
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| dewdrop_world wrote: | | Sieg heil Jesus |
Brilliant. Never thought of that but it is often so true...
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FLechdrop
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:56 am Post subject:
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Mosc:
I'm rather prone to call the second type 'sound art' rather than music, nowadays. I found the conclusions reached by Schaeffer in this interview rather appropriate. I.e. there is no music outside of 'do-re-mi'. The rest can be magnificent sound; it can be very nice, pleasant and beautiful - but not music. I think that if anyone was ever in a position to make such a distinction, it was Schaeffer - after having spend his entire life trying to invent a 'new' music. Though, of course, this doesn't make his opinion certain truth. I hope I'm making no one angry now. |
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mosc
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 10:33 am Post subject:
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Interesting interview. I couldn't find the term 'sound art' in there at all. Still, I see your point.
Fascinating that to him there was a big difference between electronic music and musique concrete. This is probably because of the attitudes of the practitioners of both he was experiencing at the time he was working. Doesn't seem at all relevant today.
I certainly think type 2 is music. The more I think about it, the more I like the term type 2. Any "descriptive" term carries too much semantic baggage. Schaeffer calls type 1 "do, re, me" - yuk.
I work in both types myself, but have yet to find names I accept - still looking. Bachus has some interesting terms, but I've forgotten them. 
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play
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 10:40 am Post subject:
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| Quote: | | I'm rather prone to call the second type 'sound art' rather than music, nowadays. I found the conclusions reached by Schaeffer in this interview rather appropriate. I.e. there is no music outside of 'do-re-mi'. The rest can be magnificent sound; it can be very nice, pleasant and beautiful - but not music. I think that if anyone was ever in a position to make such a distinction, it was Schaeffer - after having spend his entire life trying to invent a 'new' music. Though, of course, this doesn't make his opinion certain truth. I hope I'm making no one angry now. |
words.
I've always been fond of the definition of music found in high school music theory text books, "Time and sound". That's about as accurate as you can get without being subjective. Music is really in the mind of the listener. Have you ever sat in nature or even on a busy street and suddenly experienced the beauty of these "random" sounds? What is so different about what humans do with sound than cicadas or even wind in the trees? So many pointless distinctions that only serve to distract us from actually experiencing music. I too I hope I'm not making anyone angry now =) |
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seraph
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 10:50 am Post subject:
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| mosc wrote: |
Fascinating that to him there was a big difference between electronic music and musique concrete. |
afaik, in the 50's for electronic music they meant synthetic means of production (oscillators, filters etc.), for "musique concrete" they meant music based on the electronic manipulation of samples taken from real life.
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| Quote: | | Don't die with your music still in you - Wayne Dyer |
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Antimon
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 11:24 am Post subject:
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| play wrote: |
words.
I've always been fond of the definition of music found in high school music theory text books, "Time and sound". |
Like a lot of other concepts (time, religion etc.), a general and objective definition of the word music is difficult to find, if not impossible. In a more specific discussion, people will subconsciously understand what kind of definition of music is used. Apparently (been looking in my encyclopedia), greek (and other languages) doesn't have a direct translation of the word, "mousike" referring to the terrains of all nine muses, in symbiosis with poetry, dance etc.
I feel in this discussion (being about the usefulness of traditional instrument sounds), the topic is pretty much on Type 1...?
/Stefan
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bachus
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 11:27 am Post subject:
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| mosc wrote: | | Bachus has some interesting terms, but I've forgotten them. |
 You mean "pitch class set" music for type 1?
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