It is almost a revelation to read through texts such as "Foundations of Computer Music" and realize that much of what is considered modern synthesis technique was developed and often already "transcended" in the sixties and seventies. In fact, much of what is considered new and innovative on the nord and similar devices are simply implementations of initially cumbersome, yet developed techniques of several decades past.

I for one find it numbingly depressing to flip through even SOS these days, as the level of feature repetition and the general lack of daring in technique/process reads like a death toll for creative electronic music.

My interest has always been the apparently non-contextual (or perhaps extra-cultural) space that electronic sounds have occupied. I took a deliberate hiatus from electronic music during much of the nineties as I found this space increasingly encroached upon. Although the "analog" revival has renewed interest in "non-traditional" synthesis techniques, it often lacks the daring that flows from the more "research"-oriented work that predates (and runs parallel to) it.

Akin, owner of the British label Irdial insisted about five or six years ago that the drum machine/sampler playback was no longer relevant to modern music. At the time, I was resistant to such a dogmatic approach; however, these days it seems that every new record, full of "competantly" produced techno music makes the genre that much more irrelevant.

The sort of hollistic contemplation exhibited by Kofi and Rob is the trancendent gesture in all of this. It's so easy to produce "competant" electronic music these days that I can't say I see the point in doing it. As Morton Feldman said of Bach's "Grosse Fugue", it was only through the sense of a self-destructive gesture that the composer reached such subliminal heights. I am of the opinion that said research is the only way forward from what has become dull and worn ground and that while it is important that we do our homework on the technical/procedural foundations, we must constantly push beyond them.

Stop me if this is TOO off-topic but...

Jamie: how is competently-produced techno irrelevant? If more and more people are making it and listening to it, and fewer people are making/listening to experimental electronica... doesn't that make the genre MORE relevant (to culture in general) than it was?

Just interested...

This is interesting. I find myself absolutely divided on the state of "electronic" music. On the one hand, there is so much out there today that is pushing at the envelope of what constitutes sound/music, and a strong historical sensibility regarding synthesis on sites like this. That is very good. On the other hand, perhaps nothing has done more to destroy musicality--the ability to imagine and play music--than the over (and unimaginative) use of tape loops, drum machines, and the such in pop and club music. This is not a condemnation of those (or any other) type of music, but a suspicion that once an art-form becomes too "easy" it suffers.

There is an interesting book called "Any Sound You Can Imagine" by Paul Theberge that addresses some of these issues.

First off, in retrospect, I should have refrained from posting the last email. No matter what my intentions, it came off wrong.

There's a lot of interesting, somewhat traditional techno being released these days, coming, for the most part, from Frankfurt, Helsinki and (an admitted bias!) Heidelberg.

I can't say I have much faith in the current state of american electronic music and I can't help but attribute that to at least partly a lack of focus on the skill of synthesis and, well, open-mindeness about the goals and context of one's music. Of course, there are numerous exceptions and beyond this, it's all personal opinion.

I love this group list and the uncanny sense of perspective that many of the contributors bring to it. Yes, I think there's something magical about being discursive on the minutae of our surroundings and yes, I can't help but find it a whole lot more interesting than the genre-hopping that seems to embody most modern music. I guess they are ultimately referential, but perhaps I prefer the liberating nature of Kofi's reference.

Right, and in many cases (this one notwithstanding) it's also partly due to the critic's lack of knowledge and exposure to other forms of good electronic music going on around him. I don't mean that as too much of a personal insult, but there's far more going on than you probably realize. "American electronic music" is far too much of a generalization on which one can pass any critical judgment.

Ah, this is a subject for which I have a special interest. Basically I agree very much with you and know the perils of having these views.

The recent twenty years the emphasis has been very much on technical implementation. However it seems, as you so clearly point out, that the 'thinking' started already in the early fifties and ended somewhere in the seventies. Imho this is because it is not about technique, which is only a tool to reach a different goal, instead it is about music. The most important development for music in the twentieth century has been the development of recording devices, the taperecorder so to say, around 1950. This meant that music could be manipulated in new ways not possible and hardly conceivable before. Although the fifties didn't show a big production or output, well, compared to nowadays standards, some very clever and creative minds figured out what electronics could do for music. And they did a thorough job.

Somehow it feels logical, in the early fifties electronics became available as a means in music. Definitely a major, big impact event. But what comparable event has occured since? Using optics in music? Or chemistry? No. In truth were just cows quietly grazing the grasses that have been sawn by our predecessors in the fifties, and only few realize this. Eg granular synthesis is by many considered a new technique but its stems from the fifties. Perhaps only creating virtual acoustic models is relatively recent, I've never read any literature about physical modelling predating the early eighties. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if the basic idea is older.

The positive side is that technique has now developed to such a useful level that the emphasis can slowly shift back to music. At first electronics in music was experimental, then it became part of the 'quick bucks economy', where a synthesizer sound had to be instantly recognizable as a synthesizer sound. Today we can go back to experimental again, which for me means that synthesizer sounds do not have to sound like synthesizers at all. Imho I think music itself is without rules, instead there are rules to make quick and big bucks which have been applied to music thus making it commercial music. Nowadays these rules can simply be abandoned and I guess they will massively be abandoned soon. This is as artists earn relatively less and less on CDs, the percentage of earnings that go to record companies and right holders gradually increases all the time. We are about on the point where it doesn't pay for an artist anymore to release music through a big record company. Making the music freely available on eg. The Internet, where in the end only quality will gain the momentum for an artist that will attract the audiences to the performances. There the artist can make some direct money. In general artists like to perform, so this is probably exactly the way it should be. Which reminds me of the late sixties/early seventies when there were the big 'album' and 'live' bands. They were hardly in the charts and there was no MTV yet. Instead they became known by magazines and mouth to mouth recommendations. The same happens these days in several of the more underground genres. And here lies the route to a new musical freedom and musical experimentation in 'electronic music'. What will never be according to the quick bucks rules can still live happily and prosper here. So, the aim is not a particular 'commercial' form anymore but a free form with the aim of quality. And I'm optimistic, I think the quality will eventually survive, not the poppy stuff that makes some bobos rich.

So perhaps magazines like SOS did have their best times, unless they shift to report more on free music and the musical means used there and they let the artists and not the market define what music is.

So, who cares about 'competant' music these days, lets try to make top quality 'uncompetant' music and be proud!

Stop me if I am wrong, but I guess this has to do with a very touchy topic: what's "popular" and what's "good" ? In many cases, defenders of both kinds won't agree.

"Quality" or possibly "relevant" music lurking in the darkness, but its sound is covered by too many easy commercial hits.

My 2 eurocents worth.

Dave Pape wrote:

I was just interested in the use of the word "relevant" really... kind of touched my perceived-elitism button. OT, I know, so sorry if I'm stirring trouble for no reason.

No, it's more a discussion of motivation.

Why people pick up a particular device and start to make sounds with it.

If upon starting you attract people, money, fame etc. then you will express great gratitude to the device, but you are using the device as a conduit. In such a situation you are unlikely to change your approach too much because in your mind you are satisfying your desires and unwilling to change in case you 'loose' the key

If on the other hand your interest is enquiring then you will be constantly experimenting and you will not be concerned about loosing anything.

A significant number of people are attracted to music making for the first case, this is not very surprising as there is an awful lot of pressure to succeed in the world nowaday's and music is trumpeted ( along with sport) as a way of achieving such success.

The desire to make sounds ( as opposed to music) is an exercise in self-gratification, and therefore will continue regardless. The second group are more likely to freely provide there work to others ( patches) as they (selfishly) realise they can learn from the reaction. The first group are unlikely to provide free material because in effect they could be giving away the 'thing' that provides them with what they really require.

We see it a lot in video production. The video editors you know are going to succeed are the one that at the end of a session when the client says ' Coming for a drink?' say no and spend another hour or two tidying up the work some more ( in their minds they never finish it) whilst the editors of the first type can't wait to finish cos then they get what they are really after the social like associated with what they have been involved in producing.

The truth as always is somewhere in between these two extremes but I can give you many examples from several industries

>The recent twenty years the emphasis has been very much on technical implementation.

Not so sure about that.

> However it seems, as you so clearly point out, that the 'thinking' started already in the early fifties and ended somewhere in the seventies. Imho this is because it is not about technique, which is only a tool to reach a different goal, instead it is about music.

And ... I am not so sure about that, either... I think something you are ignoring is about the dissemination, also, of music.

> The most mportant development for music in the twentieth century has been the dvelopment of recording devices, the taperecorder so to say, around 1950.

Well ... there was that side of it, but again the ease with which music ould be disseminated also, in my opinion anyway, played a very big part.

> This meant that music could be manipulated in new ways not possible and hardly conceivable before.

Yes ... but ... not a lot of point in it if other people couldn't hear it ... and also not a lot of point in it if the "musical community" was not being extended outwards.

> Although the fifties didn't show a big production or output, well, compared to nowadays standards, some very clever and creative minds figured out what electronics could do for music. And they did a thorough job.

True.

> Somehow it feels logical, in the early fifties electronics became available as a means in music.

OK.

> Definitely a major, big impact event.

OK. But ... I think you are forgetting something very important. For example, in October 1954 the very first consumer transistor radio ever built hit the market. The Regency TR-1. It billed itself as the world's first pocket radio. Four germanium transistors. A 22-and-a-half volt battery that gave just over twenty hours of useful life. Since the competition was tube radios that could only last 2 to 3 hours, this was a very big deal. They even came in different colours: black, ivory, mandarin red, cloud gray, mahogany and olive green if I recall. You could even get them in clear cases so that you could admire their inner workings. They weighed eleven ounces ... and they cost just under $50. Expensive. But ... affordable.

A musician is nothing without a market ... and a changed way of making music requires a changed demographic. If, after all, the music is very new, then it takes a very new sociological grouping of people to form and appreciate that music. As an example, the classical orchestra was created by the process of industrialization. You suddenly had large groups of musicians wielding different instruments gathered together in cities and in close proximity to each other ... and composers and musicians were not about to ignore the possibilities that implied. There were those who could afford to fund the experiment of gathering them together and having music written for those groups. This immediately led to new theoretical investigations about what could be done with such groups on the various musical levels.

In just the same way, the composers to whom you are referring were being given an access to a new audience through the very media that they began to exploit as a way of making music. I don't see that the one could have happened without the other.

> But what comparable event has occured since?

Well ... the impact hasn't hit us yet, but surely the Internet along with mp3's and the like in how they are going to force a redefinition of what music is and what musicians are. Also ... I don't think the question is quite fair because it is focusing on the technological activities and ignoring the sociological realities of the possibilities opened up for new kinds of audiences to form ... and whether or not people wanted to gather into those kinds of new groupings.

In addition to all of that, I think that the question of "what a musician is" is key issue, and that is immediately the one opened up. When Sax invented his new bass clarinet and saxophone, for example, many "real musicians" refused to play them and the entire wind section in one orchestra (Paris, I think) resigned rather than be forced to play his new clarinets.

> Using optics in music? Or chemistry? No. In truth were just cows quietly grazing the grasses that have been sawn by our predecessors in the fifties, and only few realize this. Eg granular synthesis is by many considered a new technique but its stems from the fifties.Perhaps only creating virtual acoustic models is relatively recent, I've never read any literature about physical modelling predating the early eighties. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if the basic idea is older.

Well ... I think we have to consider what "a composer" is. I also think your basic idea is correct ... i.e. that the way in which composers thought and imagined sounds changed with the invention of electricity, tape recorders and the like. But, it is interesting to note what changed. The issue, primarily, as far as I can understand it, is that of detachment. Microphones, loudspeakers, and gadgets of that ilk are, primarily, detaching instruments. The sound phenomenon is detached from the physical and mechanical processes that first brought it into being -- and then it becomes "a thing" that can be manipulated in its own right. We have created an analogue, and later digital, representation of something that has a life all of its own. The next step is to create, of course, an abstract sound that does not exist anywhere in the sense of being mechanical and acoustical because it has never had any form other than the electrical. Digitization simply increases this kind of flexibility. That's to say, the modern technology of sound has made the noises that we consider music immaterial in the sense that it is not bound to any instrument, nor to any performer. We can now create entire albums using VSTi's and other such things that never really had a real existence. They stimulate the ears of the audience just the same, however.

But ... what's happening at the other end, i.e. to the audience? The transistor radio is again the case in point. The rock and roll "audience" was created by the transistor radio. Young people could gather around it and listen to music that was "theirs" and nobody else's. It certainly wasn't the music of their parents. The primary instruments that was used in that new music electrical and transistor -- the same as the instrument on which it was played. The new starts of that genre had sudden access to an audience of millions who all thought as they did, most of whom they would never meet and who would never see them play live. Gradually, studio bands grew up whose music was entirely created to "sound good" in the recording medium, although it might never sound good "live". Music of the "classical" type was also affected by this change, however. Classical music is very far from dead, but it is a bit depressing to see what has happened to even a once venerable label like Hyperion.

But ... the thing that I think you have ignored, Rob, is that technological advances of the kind that you have highlighted not only affect composers, they also affect the nature and structure of audiences. And ... without changes occurring in the nature and structure of audiences, there would be no demand for the music that composers are making. This was so even when the classical tradition was being established. Composers started writing for orchestras, something that had never existed before ... immediately meaning that they were writing for people who had never before been a classical audience. A classical music audience required the same parameters that allowed the orchestra to be put together ... namely ... people living in large industrialized cities who were struggling to come up with a new way to identify themselves and their interests. You can't have the one without the other is all I am saying.

> The positive side is that technique has now developed to such a useful level that the emphasis can slowly shift back to music.

I don't think that's entirely it. We are now all so used to these technological innovations (it takes a generation and more to get used to them) that we can gradually become more discerning, as an audience, because we have a clearer idea "what it's about". We have also defined ourselves better as an audience in the sense of what "satisfies" us when we hear it.

> At first electronics in music was experimental,

... and ... those interested in it were "weird", and were busy trying to define themselves at least as fast as the composers were trying to stretch those definitions. Now, those who are interested in this kind of music are not so "weird" after all.

> then it became part of the 'quick bucks economy', where a synthesizer sound had to be instantly recognizable as a synthesizer sound.

... and ... at one time ANY synthesizer sound would have been by definition "weird" and "experimental". Now we can judge it differently because we have all heard so many of them. What has also happened is that a large audience has identified itself as one that "expects" to hear a particular kind of sound and that is prepared to pay good money to have those sounds available. Those who still want to "experiment" have tried to move on, but there are really very many less places to go to now than there previously were. So well have they done their job of leading others there ... and ... just as importantly ... so successful have been the technological advances that allowed an audience to be created using those particular technological innovations.

> Today we can go back to experimental again, which for me means that synthesizer sounds do not have to sound like synthesizers at all.

Aaaah. Abstract sounds that do not necessarily have to have any "real" or "mechanical" analogues. So far have we come along this road that we now have a worldwide audience that is prepared to listen to any sound that does not exist in nature, and is prepared to judge that sound entirely for what it is in the context of music that is provided, and without necessarily having to sound like anything in particular.

But alongside this ... we again have an audience that has free and ready access to a whole range of devices that allows it to be a virtual audience of many different types, and to enjoy the music of instrumentalists from all over, playing real or imagined instruments, that they will probably never ever listen to. I can go to a record shop in any major city on this planet and probably buy a record of gamelan music if I so wish. Or, for that matter, of an Indonesian Nord Modular owner who has made sounds up in his head inspired by nothing else except his or her own fertile imagination and a funny red-coloured box. I am ready to be an audience for such music if there are any such musicians on this list. But please notice -- that the same technology that allows that musician to create is also allowing me to be an audience for that music -- and without us having ever met.

My point being, this is not only about the composers and what they did ... it is also about the creation of an audience, and it is also about the willingness of others to become that audience ... all of them making use of exactly the same technological advances.

> Imho I think music itself is without rules,

And that I am not sure I agree with. All music is about rules. Music is about communicating, and communicating can only be done with certain shared expectations. What you are saying, it seems to me, is equivalent to saying that a language can have no grammar. Well ... a poet can rail against, and try to step beyond, the "normal" rules of grammar and syntax in order to stretch meanings and try to make a point. But the intelligibility that remains is entirely due to the rules and conventions that give meaning to utterances, and thus to the few things that the poet has left intact. If every convention or rule is flouted then it is doubtful that the poet will be understood.

> instead there are rules to make quick and big bucks which have been applied to music thus making it commercial music.

Also ... I don't think that there are any rules to make quick and big bucks in music. Some have a way and others don't. Let me put it this way, if there are rules then I certainly don't know them. I wish I did because I would dearly love to make a lot of money through music. I've tried everything I know and nothing so far has worked. I am not interested in being talented. I just want someone to tell me the rules for making a lot of money through music. I hear a lot of totally talentless people making money from music who obviously know the rules. But then again ... I've heard lots of talentless people who also somehow never learned the rules for making money from music. They sound exactly the same as each other to me and I'm baffled why one lot make lots of money and the others don't ... but that's probably just me!!!

> Nowadays these rules can simply be abandoned and I guess they will massively be abandoned soon.

Which rules? The rules for making money through music, or the rules for making music?

> This is as artists earn relatively less and less on CDs, the percentage of earnings that go to record companies and right holders gradually increases all the time.

Now THAT is a whole other can of worms!! It is surely all bound up with the methods composers use for connecting with their audience -- which is an inevitable part of the technology that the audiences and composers share. When there is no amplification, for example, then that itself establishes "the method". Go ye forth and play before your audience and connect with them that way. And pick instruments that are loud enough for whatever hall you are playing in. As different technologies come along, so "the rules" change. Nowadays, if you really want to sound "in your face" go ye forth and get a compressor.

The present method of doing business in the music industry certainly needs to be changed, and you have no quarrel with me on that. However, it will only change, and record companies will only begin to die, when audiences and composers find another way to communicate with each other ... and in such a way that composers can genuinely make an equitable living. The truly dire music that surrounds us at present is because this simply is not happening -- people have not yet found the way to create and reach new audiences utilizing the available technology in new audience-creating ways. Which is what happened with the transistor radio and MTV, for example.

> We are about on the point where it doesn't pay for an artist anymore to release music through a big record company.

Quite. But ... we need to remember that when music changed radically in the last century, it was also on the back of such technological advances as the transistor radio which allowed audiences to redefine themselves just as fast as composers were redefining what it was that made "real music" "real music".

> Making the music freely available on eg. The Internet, where in the end only quality will gain the momentum for an artist that will attract the audiences to the performances.There the artist can make some direct money.

How is this supposed to work? For example, if you go now to mp3.com, lots and lots of music, but how are you supposed to identify the stuff you, personally, like? And ... where do the communities form so that when I in Australia hear something I like, I can tell the people in Copenhagen who might also like the same thing. How is this to be done?

Here's an article from Wired about a few people who've tried so far to make it work. Not much success so far!! http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,47405,00.html

> In general artists like to perform, so this is probably exactly the way it should be.

Maybe so. But ... we are now in an era when most of the people who like a particular artist will probably never be able to hear them perform. I, for example, like many African music artists I will never in a million years ever get to hear performing live because I will probably never visit their countries.

> Which reminds me of the late sixties/early seventies when there were the big 'album' and 'live' bands. They were hardly in the charts and there was no MTV yet. Instead they became known by magazines and mouth to mouth recommendations.

Yes, mouth to mouth recommendation is very good ... but ... when it has been recommended to me mouth to mouth by someone whose opinion I respect, still I have to hear it. Some things haven't changed, however. Whatever the size of the market or the audience, three important things are needed in order to make a living from music.

Without those three, absolutely no hope of getting anywhere. That settled, one then has to reckon what will help to achieve those three principal goals. Image, print, radio, TV, Internet. Stores, distribution, advertisements. Gigs.

> The same happens these days in several of the more underground genres.

Far as I can see, they get exposure. It's just that the nature of the market and the marketing is slightly different.

> And here lies the route to a new musical freedom and musical experimentation in 'electronic music'.

It still has to sell. Maybe not much. But it has to sell.

> What will never be according to the quick bucks rules can still live happily and prosper here. So, the aim is not a particular 'commercial' form anymore but a free form with the aim of quality.

Well, Rob ... call me an old fogey or an idealist or whatever ... but it seems to me that in every age without exception, there have always been those interested in "quality" music which is not considered -- in their time at any rate -- a part of the mainstream. Those "thinkers in music" often lay down the useful guidelines for succeeding generations even though the vast bulk of those succeeding musicians have no interest in what those thinkers actually did, or what they thought.

> And I'm optimistic, I think the quality will eventually survive, not the poppy stuff that makes some bobos rich.

Again, I think that this is an old argument, and one not new to our times. I agree with you that the quality will survive. What doesn't change much, though, is that it seems to me that there are always those who are busy calling at least some of the stuff around them "rubbish", saying that it symbolizes the death of their chosen civilization, and who are busy praying for the rebirth of some kind of music "with quality". As but possible current examples, some point to opera while others might be pointing to some unknown hack sitting in a basement somewhere, and yet others point to ... well ... whatever they feel like pointing to as their example of the salvation of all humanity.

And yet ... the next generation has something to listen to that it likes and finds rewarding, just like you and I have something we listen to and that we find spiritual and rewarding, although I really doubt that either of us will succeed in persuading our children to value the things that we do. (Although I must say that my son is currently playing with some of his friends in a little jazz band they have formed, and they are currently trying to play John Coltrane's Impressions, which I think is not bad at all for four young people of 13 and 14!!)

> So perhaps magazines like SOS did have their best times, unless they shift to report more on free music and the musical means used there and they let the artists and not the market define what music is.

And that's where I don't completely agree. Artists cannot, only by themselves, define what "music" is. All artists can do is "put it out there" in the way they best see fit, with their souls and imaginations hopefully intact ... and in the sometimes vain hope that there are others out there with sufficient humanity in them to appreciate that ingredient for what it is. And if nobody listens or "connects" -- well -- that's pretty much the end of that. The death of civilization as that person hopes for it is certainly at hand. But if people listen and are interested, then things can continue. It is just that sometimes (most of the time, probably!) a very large number of people listen to "rubbish" and then proceed to say it's "great"; and sometimes (probably not often enough) some "great" person composes and plays while a lot of people listen to it and say "rubbish". As they did with most of what Johann Sebastian Bach wrote, for example. I again don't see that the times in which we live are that much different from any other, actually ... except for one singularly interesting facet. By that I mean the possibilities enshrined in such things as mp3 files and the Internet etc which are certainly doing a great deal to change the nature of audiences and what it takes to be an audience. There is certain to be a new way of distributing and making music to go with that, along with an equally new way of defining an audience, just as the transistor radio and the invention of stereo and such like created a new way not only of stimulating, but also of finding an audience. There is the matter not only of a new audience, but also a new method of remunerating artists for their work. That, too, has to happen. Record companies as they are today are not doing themselves, their audiences, or artists any good the way things stand at present.

I really think that "quality music" will continue to survive and that - as has in my view always been the case -- there will continue to be a few nuggets of gold hidden amongst the dross -- if only people are willing to search it out. And that people are always willing to search them out is, I think, a part of being human. However ... one person's nugget is likely to be another person's sow's ear. Not much one can do about that except hope that somewhere ... there will always be a few people who are indeed prepared to take on the hard work that is required to be "a real musician". I also hope -- believe -- that somewhere, there will also always be a few people who are prepared to work equally hard at being "a real audience", because being a good audience member is just as essential to this craft of music as being a good composer or performer. Without that participatory ingredient there is, in my view, no real music happening.

As I said above, I think the problem of the day will then be what it always has been -- getting those two disparate groups together by hatever means are possible with, and appropriate to, the technology of the day.

> So who cares about 'competant' music these days, lets try to make top quality 'uncompetant' music and be proud!

Amen to that. Bring on those patches. Personally, I am not much bothered if they are "useful" or "only for research". That's the way it is with all aspects of music as far as I can see. What makes it all worthwhile is that both are done and need to be done -- and that both are offered up to others -- and that somewhere there are others who take the trouble to be interested.

Sorry -- the above was written in a great rush with many flying fingers. Please excuse typos and the like.

One side note to all this: I highly recommend a read of Michel Foucault's "The Birth of the Clinic," an interesting historical/philosophical commentary on the development of medical "distance" and its relationship to the beginnings of modern medical scientific practice.

The "detachment" Kofi so eloquently describes below, while providing benefits in the form of increased flexibility and a loosening of constraints, disciplines, rules, as well as an increased speed in the rate of discovery, also has its negative side in that it puts distance between the expressivity of the musician and the technology of her/his practice. More than ever, electronic music-making is an act of the mind in separation from the body.

I think that's why I stay with hardware rather than software; I see the advent of soft-synths as increasing that detachment even further, at a time when moving in the opposite direction, i.e. linking more closely gestural, performative, expressive practice, technique and discipline with the music generated by same is the next major "technological" step that has to be taken.

There's nothing to stop, and no need to stop, the process of experiment in sound production. But I think there's been a loss of emphasis on connecting sound production with full acts of human expressive behaviour. Mainly because there has yet to be a real, commercial success produced by experiments along such lines.

And, where there _has_ been a commercial success -- i.e. the "groovebox" -- this has been seen as, rather than enabling and advancing electronic music, packaging and commodifying a certain limited range of musical practice for people perceived as "non-musicians."

Its to get XY control, which is controlling two parameters in a single twodimensional movement. Remember that the throat does five, six or maybe even more synchronous movements to produce speech, so, my guess is that the key to expressiveness in electronic music lies in multidimensional movements or the combination of several synchronous movements.

My aim is simply to learn how to become intuitively expressive with the myriad of twodimensional movement possibilities of a XY controller. The same intuitive expressiveness present when we speak. Mounting a joystick is simply the most direct way to get this XY control. First I experimented with a Kaosspad but wasn't really satisfied with the results, then I thought, why not punch a hole in the NM? Warranty has expired long ago and I do have a spare just in case I screw up. I want to look some more in gesture control as well, I think about two Theremin modules/antennas maybe thirty centimeters apart, so a XY field is created. The left and right values should be processed in a way that both left/right position and depth parameters are created. But some complex nonlinear computation must be done, and if the two values are input at only seven bits then there will probably be not much accuracy in the results. Here some more accurate initial values are needed, probably a special processorbox with two highres ADs and a microcontroller could do a fine job. I thought of this as I noticed that on a traditional Theremin one controls two totally separate one-dimensional parameters, each with a single hand. And it simply would be nice to control two parameters with a single handmovement from which the left/right and back'n forth movements are extracted.

Which reminds me that if Clavia would ever develop new hardware my most urgent need would be a control voltage I/O option. I imagine four inputs and outputs with a resolution of at least twelve bits and a 24kHz sampling rate with the ADDA converters directly connected to the DSPs, like the way the audio ADDA is implemented now. I think twelve bits would provide for a good noise floor for control voltages, but still 4096 discrete values to represent a maximum of a ten octave range. Thats about 32 intermediate values within half a note, which is the internal pitchbend spec for many synths. An analog scaling down to a three octave range would within a half note result in almost the accuracy a 7 bit midi device would have to use for the whole range! So this would allow for some really fine interfacing, but yes, I would go for fourteen or sixteen bit ADDA as well. And perhaps four related trigger in and outputs would complete the option. So, imagine very fast and accurate control from any external controller and from and to an analog synth. Or mount a NM rack as a module in your existing analog modular, just to be sure you always have that extra module you need but is not there in analog form, a dayly recurring event if you like to experiment with your analog modular. Or control your light/lasershow with a NM, ok one can already do that. Or control your little Fischer Teknik construction swaying heavily back and forth in the exact beat of your videoclip.

Anyway the synthesis within the NM is very fast, sharp and accurate. So imho it just begs for added fast and accurate analog control. In fact guys, I would choose for this option against memory if it had to be a trade off! And I know what that memory can be used for. But there is other equipment that can do the memory stuff, but fast and accurate control by analog control voltages is very, very rare on digital equipment. Most of the time its only seven bits with a sloppy timing. But a fast and accurate analog control link directly on the DSP would definitely open up for some very interesting combinations with other types of equipment and sensors. It would make the NM stand out against anything else in the digital domain.

> > The most important development for music in the twentieth century has been the development of recording devices, the taperecorder so to say, around 1950.

> Well ... there was that side of it, but again the ease with which music could be disseminated also, in my opinion anyway, played a very big part.

>> This meant that music could be manipulated in new ways not possible and hardly conceivable before.

> Yes ... but ... not a lot of point in it if other people couldn't hear it ... and also not a lot of point in it if the "musical community" was not being extended outwards.

Perhaps, but I wonder if composers like Karl Heinz Stockhousen or Paul Schafer really did have an audience in mind. They didn't really know yet what to expect from an audience during their earliest attempts. I vaguely recall having heard that it took the audience a while to get used to Stockhousen using ringmodulators. The point is there is much rumour but little solid documentation from the period itself. So, instead it could also have been the 'play' of the matured 'homo ludens', the plain fun an artist can have when developing something new and trying to cross a border for him/herself. To me it seems like especially the French took quite a playful attitude with the development of what is now known as Music Concrete. In that time there must have been something fresh and adventurous about it, which is not a bad motivation at all... There have been several electronic musical instruments developed before and several composers wrote quite traditional music for these instruments. But afaik, only in the early fifties electronics starts to be used in a _non-traditional_ way, tape manipulations, etc. What did these people have in mind when they started to do this, what was their motivation, how far did they realize what they were initiating, those kind of questions. Very intriguing, but I just like a playfull spirit in an artist. I try to be that way myself, I think its rewarding, not for big public successes or to become known, instead the reward is it simply makes me feel good all the time. And one of life's best properties is the possibility to feel good and ignite this feel by the way one does things. Sometimes its almost the 'childish fun of making crazy noises', and why not?

So I doubt if development of mass communication media really was a mayor motivation in the development of electronic music. But I wasn't there yet, my view is limited on this subject. And there might even be different views at both sides of the Atlantic, here in Europe big numbers don't really seem to play a big role in things like culture and art. In fact culture and art are quite 'elite' over here. Its one thing to know you're Rembrandt, but quite another to know Saenredam and know what the doggie is all about.

> The "detachment" Kofi so eloquently describes below, while providing benefits in the form of increased flexibility and a loosening of constraints, disciplines, rules, as well as an increased speed in the rate of discovery, also has its negative side in that it puts distance between the expressivity of the musician and the technology of her/his practice. More than ever, electronic music-making is an act of the mind in separation from the body.

> I think that's why I stay with hardware rather than software;

In my gut I agree with you about the preference for hardware over software, but the reality of the situation is that for most of us without all this software our musical horizons would be considerably more limited than they are. I am well aware of the limitations of MIDI-fied instruments, but I'd really rather have them, warts and all, then be without them. I know perfectly well that the ocarina or shakuhachi patch on my synthesizer probably sounds nothing like "the real thing" but it still increases my soundscape possibilities and I'd rather have it than not have it.

> I see the advent of soft-synths as increasing that detachment even further, at a time when moving in the opposite direction, i.e. linking more closely gestural, performative, expressive practice, technique and discipline with the music generated by same is the next major "technological" step that has to be taken.

What technological step, exactly, are you referring to? One can't overstate the case, of course, but it seems to me that essentially one is talking about dimensions (in the mathematical sense). There's the standard 9 dimensions of riding a bicycle, these being: the 3 coordinates for the bicycle's position in space, 3 more for its orientation in space, the rotational position of the wheels, and the angle of the handle-bars. One could come up with a couple of others, but 20 dimensions should be enough to cover it as far as modelling is concerned. So ... in that sense ... how many different dimensions of expression can even the world's best musician actually command? With a violin one would have speed of the bow, distance from the bridge, pressure of articulation, vibrato, pitch variation, bowing angle, number of hairs in contact with string, couple more variables devoted to the start and end of notes ... I am not saying that it really is possible to get a computer simulation that would even be close to Yehudi Menuhin or someone playing, but then again a musician does not, in fact, have that many variables to play around with. I am simply trying to say that at the end of the day, a person playing the violin probably doesn't play around with that many more variables than someone sitting at their PC design some "tedious" piece of surrogate electronically styled music. It's surely just that the variables are different.

> There's nothing to stop, and no need to stop, the process of experiment in sound production.

Totally agreed!

> But I think there's been a loss of emphasis on connecting sound production with full acts of human expressive behaviour.

Well ... a part of me really wants to agree with you on that because at heart I am just a romantic who believes in those wood and metal things. I have a harp here, for example, and a real balaphon and other such things. BUT ... much as I like to believe that those are somehow "real" music-makers in a way that many other things are not, I am stuck for the fact that I also have several synth modules along with some software stuff that I actually enjoy playing with. I for example have an old Korg EX-8000 that's 15 years old now if it's a day, and every memory module is filled with stuff I made myself, and into which I put just as much heart and soul and graft as I put into any "real" instrument I play.

So ... I think it's just as much the case of looking to see how human expressiveness is likely to show itself in something new and different, and how that "connects" with any potential audience.

> Mainly because there has yet to be a real, commercial success produced by experiments along such lines. And, where there _has_ been a commercial success -- i.e. the "groovebox" -- this has been seen as, rather than enabling and advancing electronic music, packaging and commodifying a certain limited range of musical practice for people perceived as "non-musicians."

Well ... them grooveboxes are, I think. "real instruments" in their own right, and as such it takes time to get to know them. True that "non-musicians" can easily get something passable together in 5 minutes flat, but that's nowhere near the same thing as taking the time to master one's instrument and one's medium.

And THERE, I think, lies a lot of the trouble with this stuff. It's a depressing thought, but when over 90% (I think that's right) of synthesizers are sent back to the shops for repairs, there's not a single new user-created patch in any of their banks. The owners haven't even touched the possibilities of "real synthesizers", but have simply been content to use the factory-provided presets. If there's an awful lot of synthesizers out there sounding the same and bespeaking a lack of expressiveness, then I think the answer lies more in the people using them than it does in the technology that they are using.

> Why has Rob H hacked his Nord to add hardware control?

Good question.

Well ... I'll have to let Rob answer that one, but from what I've seen of him on this list in the short amount of time I've been on it, his weirdness quotient is actually pretty high so my money's on the strange and unexpected and most certainly not on the common or garden and ordinary. Heyo there Rob!!!

Ditto.

Hey .... I just said all that!!! (or something similar) Ah well. I always am following along in the shadow of Rob Hordijk!!

> .... then I thought, why not punch a hole in the NM?

Like I said ... a man with a high weirdness or W quotient!!

> Which reminds me that if Clavia would ever develop new hardware my most urgent need would be a control voltage I/O option. I imagine four inputs and outputs with a resolution of at least twelve bits and a 24kHz sampling rate with the ADDA converters directly connected to the DSPs, like the way the audio ADDA is implemented now. I think twelve bits would provide for a good noise floor for control voltages, but still 4096 discrete values to represent a maximum of a ten octave range. Thats about 32 intermediate values within half a note, which is the internal pitchbend spec for many synths. An analog scaling down to a three octave range would within a half note result in almost the accuracy a 7 bit midi device would have to use for the whole range! So this would allow for some really fine interfacing, but yes, I would go for fourteen or sixteen bit ADDA as well. And perhaps four related trigger in and outputs would complete the option.

W squared!!

<snip>

> So, imagine ...

<snip>

Wow!!!! Make that W squared squared!! More power to you Rob. I hope them Clavia guys are listening.

> Rob Hordijk wrote: ... I wonder if composers like Karl Heinz Stockhousen or Paul Schafer really did have an audience in mind.

> They didn't really know yet what to expect from an audience during their earliest attempts.

No. The audience was busy being formed even as they were writing ... and what that audience wanted was people who, in expressing themselves deeply, also expressed the audience's feelings deeply.

> I vaguely recall having heard that it took the audience a while to get used to Stockhousen using ringmodulators.

Yes. It was very new. In this context, I have always liked Varese's quote: I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm. He said that in the late 1930's, and it was a good description of the coming computer music. As a composer, Varese was tired of what a lot of composers were tired of ... the inability to hear what you were composing NOW. Without having to wait for the orchestra or whatever to actually play it. He was also tired of the tonal, textural, and timbral "samenesses" of acoustic instruments. I know that you are a lover of the theremin and the martenot ... and a very interesting question is why such expressive instruments did not make "the mainstream". One can only conjecture, but a good part of it must surely be that " the music world" -- and that means composers as well as their audiences -- simply weren't ready for such a dramatic alteration in theconception of what was to be considered musical, and what a musical instrument was. Even today, there are still composers around who believe that the equal tempered pitch system is the be-all and end-all of making music. During the 1930's n the 1930's composers such as Hindemith, Toch and Milhaud used the electric phonograph not just for performance, but also for composition. In his Imaginary Lunar Landscape Cage mixed varying turntable speeds with test signals, muted pianos and cymbals and the like, all played together in live radio broadcasts.

The point being ... people had to get used to the new technology and to incorporate it into their lives, and gradually learn to see it as not quite THAT new and strange after all, but capable of generating music. As far as the ring modulation you mentioned goes, I think it was in Cologne that the first simple sine tone, free from overtones, was put to musical uses. That same studio had noise generators, ring odulators, filters, and reverberators. Their ring modulators produced sidebands by allowing one tone to modulate the amplitude of another. The textures were then used to control timbres. One of the people who heard those experiments was Stockhausen. But ... not only was he ready to exploit them more fully in a musical way, gradually people were becoming willing to listen to them in a way they had not been prepared to listen to the theremin or martenot. Varese, Stockhausen, Babbitt, Cage, Subotnick and most particularly Carlos ... they were the ones who turned the word "synthesizer" into a household word. Subotnick, I think, provided the first library of works that took full advantage of the capabilities of the smaller synthesizers that were being produced ... or at least ... the first sheaf of works that people were actually prepared to listen to and in that sense encourage the whole thing to continue.

> The point is there is much rumour but little solid documentation from the period itself.

True. But it's fun to think about!! At least ... it is if you're real weird like me!!!

> So, instead it could also have been the 'play' of the matured 'homo ludens', the plain fun an artist can have when developing something new and trying to cross a border for him/herself.

I never denied this element of it, and sorry if it seemed that way. However, since you have used 'homo ludens' then what I was trying to say was that the composer as homo ludens needs a listener as homo ludens to also play the game, or else the whole thing comes to a grinding halt.

> To me it seems like especially the French took quite a playful attitude with the development of what is now known as Music Concrete. In that time there must have been something fresh and adventurous about it, which is not a bad motivation at all...

True. But it seems to me that it was just another way of asking the same question that is always being asked with every development and innovation. What is music really? Schaeffer chose the term "musique concrete" in order to distinguish it from "musique abstraite" or what we call "normal music". With "normal music" one writes a score, which is abstract, and the music is then later realized. With music concrete, we record concrete sounds direct to tape, and that then is our music. The emphasis was on 'found sounds', on natural recordings. It therefore distinguished itself very clearly from the other big direction in "the new music" which was electronically produced sounds which were by "abstract" or "unreal" in a very different way. What killed music concrete was the problem that Varese outlined. A music concrete piece could take months and months of careful recording, splicing and looping to record ... and then it was all over in just a few minutes of playing that belied all that original effort.

> There have been several electronic musical instruments developed before and several composers wrote quite traditional music for these instruments. But afaik, only in the early fifties electronics starts to be used in a _non-traditional_ way, tape manipulations, etc.

Well ... there was a lot "non-traditional" going on within "mainstream" classical music as well, so sociologically this was not anything new. People were searching very hard indeed for a new way to make music. Amongst the traditional instrumentalists and composers we had the Vienna school, serialism, 12-tone, and the whole mess of Dallapicolla (have I spelled that right?) and others. I think it is disingenuous to concentrate solely on electronic music in that regard, because there were other attempts being made to answer exactly the same question left by the explorations of such as Wagner in response to Romanticism, Expressionism, Impressionism and such like. Where now for music? That was the big question being posed. There were many attempts to answer it, and not only in electronic music.

> What did these people have in mind when they started to do this, what was their motivation, how far did they realize what they were initiating, those kind of questions.

As just above ... they were trying to overcome the mess left by Wagner, Mahler and others who had left tonality and "real instruments" in an impossible situation -- it was really impossible to say anything, as a composer, that had not already been said. Without that contextualization the musings of people like Stockhausen really don't make sense. He didn't come out of nowhere. He was a part of a tradition of explorers in sound, and they were all stuck with the fact that the great classical composers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries had done everything with traditional instruments that anyone could think of.

> Very intriguing, but I just like a playfull spirit in an artist.

So also do I. Never intended to imply otherwise.

> I try to be that way myself, I think its rewarding, not for big public successes or to become known, instead the reward is it simply makes me feel good all the time.

True. I feel a bit Oprah Winfrey type group hug coming on on the Nord Modular list. I feel quite red and warm and cuddly, actually. What out for those sharp keys on the 3D modulars, though!!!

> And one of life's best properties is the possibility to feel good and ignite this feel by the way one does things. Sometimes its almost the 'childish fun of making crazy noises', and why not?

Why not, indeed. An audience is nice, but it doesn't always matter.

> Seen from this point its the quality that sooner or later most probably will be recognized as such and last.

Well ... quality isn't enough, Rob. Jeanne Loriod, for example, was a truly wonderful virtuoso martenot player. She was the sister in law of Messiaen. Yet ... only a few idiots like me have ever heard of her. Sorry, but I don't think quality alone is enough.

> One of my old sculpting teachers used to say: 'Don't try to be special, try to be outstanding'.

Yes. But ... unfortunately "outstanding" lies in the judgement of others.

> So I doubt if development of mass communication media really was a mayor motivation in the development of electronic music.

I think we're splitting hairs here, Rob. The technological discoveries that made electronic music possible were the self-same technological discoveries that made mass communication possible. In some cases -- e.g. electricity and the electric guitar, the transistor and the spread of rock and roll -- it's certainly possible and easy to see the connection between mass culture and the technology. In other cases, however ... Stockhausen's music is hardly popular, but it still couldn't have happened anywhere else in history but at the very time prior to and alongside when mass communication was being developed. Stockhausen might not himself have being doing "popular" things, but the things that he was using to do what he did were certainly made of components that allowed things to be popular, and that thereby gave him an audience. If people are going to learn to like music concrete, then they must be familiar with tape recorders and tape loops and thus in a position to appreciate it.

> But I wasn't there yet, my view is limited on this subject.

My view is also highly limited. Not meaning to imply otherwise. I think it's just that with my African background and my perspective on the fact that music can only really be music when it is listened to, I guess I'm not that happy with a presentation of music that ignores the fact that music is a cooperative act between the composer, the performer and the one who listens. Take one of those ingredients away and it simply isn't music because the purpose of music is to connect the community to the divine ... for the divine is the property of the community and not of any one person ... for the same divine that the composer is connected to when they search within and produce the music is exactly the same divine that the performer is moved by and that is in the heart of the listener. Therefore ... I always like to know where the audience is coming from. Sorry. Can't help that. It's the way I grew up.

> And there might even be different views at both sides of the Atlantic...

I grew up in Africa and the UK. I have only been in the USA about 5 years now. They've tried hard to corrupt me ... but I think I've hung on to a few worthwhile things still!!!

> here in Europe big numbers don't really seem to play a big role in things like culture and art.

Just because rock and roll is basically American doesn't mean that all Americans like it. Trust me Rob ... there's an awful awful lot of people in the USA can't stand MacDonald's hamburgers or the way that Coca Cola conducts its business. I dare say there's a fair few people like that on this list.

> In fact culture and art are quite 'elite' over here.

Well ... I don't like to say it ... but I think this is a generalization that really isn't going to get us very far.

> Its one thing to know you're Rembrandt, but quite another to know Saenredam and know what the doggie is all about.

I am not a US citizen. I am also not Rembrandt. I know who Pieter Saerendam was. He was a contemporary of Vermeer. If I recall, there was also a Jons Saerendam and a Jan Saerendam although I never did sort out the differences because their dates were all quite close to each other. I heard of them when I once lived in Holland, but I was young then and not as interested as I would be now.

Wow!!! What a lot of nonsense I've written the past couple of days. I must go do some patching now to make up for it!!!

Hi Kofi,

Your reply has the generosity of true creativity, and all makes sense to me; will try to be brief in my responses below:

"distancing" and "adequacy" -- you're absolutely right; you don't need the full expressive control over a solo melodic line in an ensemble accompaniment part.

I remember back in the late 70's having an argument with someone who was a rigid extremist in favor of "acoustic" over "electric" music (back when the memories of Bob Dylan "abandoning" acoustic folk music by introducing the electric guitar into his band was fresh....!! so this is not a new problem! <g>) that in fact any of the "rigidities" of electronic music had the opportunity of providing all the _more_ rhythmic counterpoint to a soulful, weaving melodic line than a pure acoustic, more "random" backing could provide. If part of the excitement of music is contrast, contrast between the machine-like and the non-machine-like is certainly an important one.

Wind instrument synthesis, though, is an important example of a path worth taking in other ways -- as you say, even with something like Roland's D-Beam (a kind of rudimentary Theremin, with nowhere near the finesse of the real thing) -- the limitations are not in the instrument but in the imagination and self-training in making use of it.

Using your mouse-adjustment-parameter example, though: yes, the _result_ might be just as much, if not more, precision in expressive performance. BUT: this requires translating the gesture from the realm of direct mind/body interaction and physical movement into its abstraction, realizing the results of that gesture in a synthetic way. It is in essence a simulation of the gesture. Perhaps if the simulation is convincing, or more, even more subtle and interesting than the actual physical gesture could produce with an instrument, the point is moot. But it seems like a lot of work to get to the same point that is achieved in the actual physical performance. It's a brilliant technical exercise but is it a real _musical_ achievement to produce a synthesizer, say, that can convincingly simulate all the details of a guitarist's performative activities, when a guitar and a guitarist will do the job just as well if not better? OTOH if you can then deconstruct all the elements of what goes into a real guitarist's performance, and recombine them in a way that would be impossible for a guitarist, yet achieve interesting and new musical results, _that_ would be an achievement.

This gets back to my own fundamental feeling about sample-based music-making. I feel that if you consider the samples purely as sound generators, and do interesting things with them, they're as valid musical sources as anything else. In fact, the creativity of many musicians using "lo-fi" equipment in the past 20 years has resulted in entirely new musical practices, with seemingly "limited" musical sources. The limit of sample-based synthesis only becomes apparent when you're using it with the primary goal of simulating that real guitar, or shakuhachi. I consider that (just my own bias) a potentially sterile direction of technological improvement, no matter how good it gets.

"variables" -- you're right, the number of physical variables involved in playing an instrument, even the most user-controlled, expressive one, is probably small. The question I still have is, however, whether you can ever fully design the complexity of interaction of those variables, and control over that interaction, in a way that is as sophisticated and _integral_ in an electronic instrument as it is on an acoustic string instrument like the violin, or koran.

"grooveboxes" -- I agree, I think they are an important addition, yet to be even more fully developed. I'm excited about what the RS-7000 represents, from Yamaha, in the way of mixing sampling, groovebox, real-time editing. A few mis-steps in the design of that (most significant one being not being able to change patches on the fly without sound interruption) but heading in the right direction.

What you're saying, ultimately, is still the truth: it's not the instrument, it's the player's skill, imagination, energy.

I was still a kid when I first heard the music of steel drums from the Caribbean, instruments made out of the discarded tops of oil barrels. It seems particularly ironic to me that often, the more _limited_ the resources available, the more resourceful people become. Give them endless possibility and they often drown in the choices. Which is probably one of the constant frustrations of electronic music, for instrument designers and dreamers of musical possibilities both. Interesting new experiments are tried -- Nord Modular, FS1R, Audity 2000 -- and inevitably serve a very niche audience. Despite the constant clamor for something "new" in the world of electronic music, and the disparaging comments made about manufacturers who reassemble the tried and true year after year, when new ideas _are_ tried, only the very few embrace them. But when has that ever been different? <g>

Thanks again, Kofi, for your thoughtfulness.

P.S.. re: the synths returned with factory presets -- heck I'm not going to let the repair techs have all my best sounds! <g> Save off to PC, and reset, before returning to the factory....

> Steve wrote: I remember back in the late 70's having an argument with someone who was arigid extremist in favor of "acoustic" over "electric" music (back when the memories of Bob Dylan "abandoning" acoustic folk music by introducing the electric guitar into his band was fresh....!!

Well well well. I smell another old fogey!!!!

> so this is not a new problem! <g>)

Nope!!!

> Wind instrument synthesis, though, is an important example of a path worth taking in other ways -- as you say, even with something like Roland's D-Beam (a kind of rudimentary Theremin, with nowhere near the finesse of the real thing) -- the limitations are not in the instrument but in the imagination and self-training in making use of it.

Please let us add ... the imagination and self-training in agreeing to be a listener of same. There's some music out there I just can't be bothered to work hard at being an avid and admiring listener of. http://www.britneyspears.org/

> Using your mouse-adjustment-parameter example, though: yes, the _result_ might be just as much, if not more, precision in expressive performance. BUT: this requires translating the gesture from the realm of direct mind/body interaction and physical movement into its abstraction, realizing the results of that gesture in a synthetic way.

Well ... it isn't that I disagree with you, but to my mind you are still quietly saying that somehow "natural" is better. Yes, I do agree that on a personal level I prefer "natural", but simply as an intellectual matter I don't see how or why "natural" should be regarded as intrinsically "superior". As a random example, when photography was first invented a lot of artists and critics railed against it saying that it could never "replace" pure and natural art, and that it might in fact devalue real art. I have never been to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa in real life, and from what I've read even a lot of people who've been to the Louvre haven't actually seen the real thing but were confronted with an imitation. I've seen pictures of it, though. I never mistook those pictures for "the original" ... and not only that, photography is now regarded as an art form ... a real art form ... in it's own right, and is studied in arts and design colleges.

> It is in essence a simulation of the gesture.

Well ... I must say that I can see no reason why the simulation as you call it of a gesture cannot also be regarded as a gesture in its own right and worthy of studying and performing in its own right in exactly the same way as photography is a real art and opens up a whole vista of expressiveness that is not available to canvas or pencil.

> Perhaps if the simulation is convincing ...

It only needs one thing to be convincing. It only needs to be itself. Just like a photograph is just itself. Even a photograph of the Mona Lisa can be "beautifully taken" and be far more preferable, as both a photograph and a representation of the original, to any second or third photograph that we wish to compare it to.

> or more, even more subtle and interesting than the actual physical gesture could produce with an instrument, the point is moot.

I do think the point is moot, but not entirely for the same reason as you do. We both share, I think, a preference for "natural" instruments ...

> But it seems like a lot of work to get to the same point that is achieved in the actual physical performance.

And that, I think, is where the difference between us lies. I am more willing, I think, to look at something supposedly synthetic as something real and in its own right capable of being judged as a thing separately from whatever it is that it might be considered a representation of. Britney Spears makes a pretty good play of writing and singing "real songs", but if I want to hear a "real song" I really do think I'd rather listen to Bob Dylan or Van Morrison. Nothing I've heard by her is that "real" to me.

> It's a brilliant technical exercise but is it a real _musical_ achievement to produce a synthesizer, say, that can convincingly simulate all the details of a guitarist's performative activities, when a guitar and a guitarist will do the job just as well if not better?

Well ... it really depends what you're looking for and at. To again refer to Stanley Jordan, the first time I heard him I was as amazed as anyone else that one guitarist playing alone could do all that. Sounded like two guitarists. But once I had familiarized myself with that, it ended up being some perfectly ordinary playing that two guitarists, working well together, could have done. Come to that ... why aren't piano duets that popular any more. Lots of piano duet pieces have simply gone out of print because people are totally uninterested in listening to them any more ... and for those who try to perform them the effort in two people learning to play as one is not really repaid by the returns in so far as audiences are prepared to work hard at listening to them. The conclusion I came to was that one well-played solo guitar or piano was worth two, and at that point I pretty much lost interest in Stanley Jordan. However, that does not negate the fact that Jordan's is still a _musical_ achievement ... even though I am a touch bigoted and wonder if it's actually a _worthwhile_ musical achievement. Again ... I think you are confusing the question of what is and is not worthwhile with the question of a thing's intrinsic and de fact musicality. As per your quote above, yes, it is both a brilliant technical exercise and also a REAL musical achievement. As to whether or not it is worthwhile to simulate such a thing, I admire them for their technical proficiency and salute that ... but eventually -- and like you -- I'd really rather hear a real guitarist.

> OTOH if you can then deconstruct all the elements of what goes into a real guitarist's performance, and recombine them in a way that would be impossible for a guitarist, yet achieve interesting and new musical results, _that_ would be an achievement.

Agreed. Hope they don't do this any time soon, though, because I really rather like my real guitars!!

>This gets back to my own fundamental feeling about sample-based music-making. I feel that if you consider the samples purely as sound generators, and do interesting things with them, they're as valid musical sources as anything else.

Agreed.

> In fact, the creativity of many musicians using "lo-fi" equipment in the past 20 years has resulted in entirely new musical practices, with seemingly "limited" musical sources.

Again, agreed. Nothing can replace creativity and imagination. Assuming, of course, that there are audience members who can appreciate it. Sadly, this is not always the case.

> The limit of sample-based synthesis only becomes apparent when you're using it with the primary goal of simulating that real guitar, or shakuhachi.

Once again, I'm with you on that one. I really don't know who on earth people think they are fooling when they sit there and wham a mod wheel or pedal up and down and try to say "hey, listen to me ... I'm a real saxophone player". It's not a real saxophone, and the music has to have some really rather good qualities in other dimensions before I will accept that fake saxophone as a real one.

> I consider that (just my own bias) a potentially sterile direction of technological improvement, no matter how good it gets.

Well ... again I'm a touch more generous in this matter than you are, I think. However, where I am with you is that there simply has to be something present in what people are doing to make me overcome my innate prejudice ... and there has to be some demonstration of a lack of sterility. I admire, for example, efforts like this: http://www.halcyon.com/jensmus/ where Eric Jensen has made a determined effort to allow people who play "traditional instruments" to incorporate samplers and such like into their music-making. Everything is there that any master cellist or cellobass player, for example, might want to do from the exploration of MIDI to alternative tunings ... and yet all presented within the format of a "traditional" instrument. The British musician Phillip Sheppard used one of Jensen's MIDI-fied cellos and said: "As with the history of art, when a new colour is created through technological advancement, it can be subtly added into the arsenal of beautiful shades and tints. To use one's own unique palette of musical colours is ultimately the most satisfying way of being a musician." He has a new CD out but I'm afraid I can't remember the title. It's really something, though, when a cellist and composer of that calibre decides to use a real cello to play a sampled one ... even though the real one is sitting right there between his legs and he could use that real one and put it through any processing medium he wanted. Here's a link to Mark Chung and a few other people who played jazz violin again sometimes using real violins, and then at other times using synthesized and sampled violins which they access via MIDI, playing their real violins ... and also sometimes accessing loops and sequences. http://shoko.calarts.edu/~chung/featured.html I used to have a link to Sheppard playing his cello with himself doing all sorts of crazy things, but I can't find it any more. Another example would be the Prism Saxophone Quartet and MIDI Ensemble. They not only play real saxophones, they incorporate fake and sampled ones into what they are doing as well. http://www.prismquartet.com/home.html

>"variables" -- you're right, the number of physical variables involved in playing an instrument, even the most user-controlled, expressive one, is probably small. The question I still have is, however, whether you can ever fully design the complexity of interaction of those variables, and control over that interaction, in a way that is as sophisticated and _integral_ in an electronic instrument as it is on an acoustic string instrument like the violin, or koran.

Well ... I think that it's possible to look at this a different way, and that's really what I had in mind although I hadn't said so explicitly. Human beings have a limited intellect and capability. Let's pick something simple like a recorder. Let's say that that has 6 variables. OK. Then ... if someone wants to make a piece of electronic, sample-play back music ... however we want to describe it ... and we need only grant to them that they, too, have 6 variables to play with, and to all intents and purposes what they are doing is exactly as expressive as the person playing the recorder. What can they vary? How many parameters are available? As soon as we have listed them and got a comparable number, then almost by definition they are being just as expressive. It's just that the dimensions of expressivity are different. That's all. Different. I just happen to stop short of saying that it's totally lacking. What I will do is say that I don't appreciate it and personally don't think much of it, but I wouldn't agree that it is lacking in expressivity when very clearly there are at least 6 elements that the person can alter, which is pretty much all that my highly-praised Renaissance recorder player can alter.

> What you're saying, ultimately, is still the truth: it's not the instrument, it's the player's skill, imagination, energy.

Yes ... but I am also trying to say that there is a skill, imagination and energy required from the listener. Sadly, when it comes to a lot of the tripe and trollop out there, I am simply not prepared to make the investment in my time and energy to get the kinds of rewards I get from the kind of music in which for some reason I have invested a lot of my time and energy.

> I was still a kid when I first heard the music of steel drums from the Caribbean, instruments made out of the discarded tops of oil barrels. It seems particularly ironic to me that often, the more _limited_ the resources available, the more resourceful people become.

Yes. One has virtually the whole history of black music in the USA to attest to that. (Go on Kofi why don't you ... enter another minefield of accusation and counter-accusation!!!!)

> Give them endless possibility and they often drown in the choices.

Yes. Which is exactly the problem faced by much modern popular music. So many choices that people just can't be bothered to develop any real kind of skill ... and what's even more depressing is the vast audiences ranging in the millions who seem to like and enjoy that kind of pap. But ... that's just me and my prejudices and unwillingness to see any great depth of music in that stuff. Not something intrinsic to that music ... but rather intrinsic to me and my inbuilt sense of elitism. I admit it. I'm a snob. OK, OK, OK. I like Miles Davis. So there!!!

> Interesting new experiments are tried -- Nord Modular, FS1R, Audity 2000 -- and inevitably serve a very niche audience.

That would be me. Niche, niche, niche.

> Despite the constant clamor for something "new" in the world of electronic music, and the disparaging comments made about manufacturers who reassemble the tried and true year after year, when new ideas _are_ tried, only the very few embrace them.

That would be me. Snob, snob, snob that I am.

>But when has that ever been different? <g>

Quite. I was an elitist prig in my last lifetime too. Only that time, I was rich as well!! Wonder what happened!!!

Kofi,

Once again, I feel like responding primarily to provoke more thoughtful, interesting and generous thought in response on your side. Maybe I should save the list from both of us though, so we can all go back to speculating about the circuitry responsible for the weird glitches that sometimes occur in some patches when they're loaded into bank D.... <g> ... and of course anticipating 4.0! <BG>

Anyways, thanks again for your thoughtful commentary. At heart I agree with your resistance to characterizing aspects of electronic music as "un-natural" vs. "natural" -- these _are_ ultimately arbitrary designations.

It may be, as I've thought sometimes, that it's more simply a question of familiar and unfamiliar context; maybe that's a better way to frame the issues? I believe in using a balance of the familiar with the unfamiliar, I just find that's the best way to create interest in my music-making.

I'll close with just a little story of one experience I had about 5 years ago. I'd decided to finally give a wide range of "underground" electronic popular music a listen (well, really, "middle underground" -- Sneaker Pimps & Meatbeat Manifesto & mziq rather than the more esoteric, deeper underground stuff) -- and immersed myself at length in the stuff. Coming back to some favorite old "classic rock" CDs, upon listening to them after that "ear training," I remember distinctly feeling that the sound palette and the musical performance in my old favorites seemed vastly more tired, and limited in range, than I'd previously ever even imagined possible. I don't know how to describe it, but it just seemed "small" by comparison.

My musical context had switched, and switched profoundly.

Have done this at length with hip-hop, too.... I know, last one to the party and all that. Again, a lot there I should have taken the time to really listen to years ago. You're absolutely right that you need to train yourself as an audience, as much as you do as an instrumentalist. I've been doing that all my life, with music from a wide range of experiences (Miles Davis YES! but Pharaoh Sanders ALSO YES!... I really like parts of Thembi in particular, I wish that had been recorded better...), and I have to remember from time to time to continue my education beyond where I already am.

> Steve wrote: At heart I agree with your resistance to characterizing aspects of electronic music as "un-natural" vs. "natural" -- these _are_ ultimately arbitrary designations.

Yes. Totally and utterly arbitrary. Same with everything, really. People used to think that "natural things" somehow followed the laws of nature while "unnatural things didn't" ... but to be frank often seems to me that even ideas about The Deity follow "the laws of nature"!

> It may be, as I've thought sometimes, that it's more simply a question of familiar and unfamiliar context ...

I think so.

> maybe that's a better way to frame the issues?

I think so.

> I believe in using a balance of the familiar with the unfamiliar, I just find that's the best way to create interest in my music-making.

Agreed.

> I'll close with just a little story of one experience I had about 5 years ago. I'd decided to finally give a wide range of "underground" electronic popular music a listen (well, really, "middle underground" - Sneaker Pimps & Meatbeat Manifesto & mziq rather than the more esoteric, deeper underground stuff) -- and immersed myself at length in the stuff. Coming back to some favorite old "classic rock" CDs, upon listening to them after that "ear training," I remember distinctly feeling that the sound palette and the musical performance in my old favorites seemed vastly more tired, and limited in range, than I'd previously ever even imagined possible.

Yes. That is why I like to listen to music from other cultures. But ... have you tried checking out some of that totally and absolutely weird-sounding and exotic 12-tone equal temperament stuff? Alien. Really. Not at all like the real, totally natural, polyrhythmic stuff any _normal_ person naturally imbibes with their mother's milk. Whole civilizations out there play the stuff. Extraordinary!!! Never mind. Maybe they'll grow out of the experiment one day and return to more normal and natural sounds. (Controversy and Irony are My Middle Names!!)

> My musical context had switched, and switched profoundly.

Yes. More of that needed everywhere.

> ... you need to train yourself as an audience, as much as you do as an instrumentalist.

Yes. I think so. That's the essence of what I've been trying to say. It's the only way to overcome that entirely artificial "natural-unnatural" divide.

> I've been doing that all my life, with music from a wide range of experiences (Miles Davis YES! but Pharaoh Sanders ALSO YES!...

Agreed. And ... let's not forget Dusty Springfield, Rokia Traore, Kandia Kouyate ... !!!

> I really like parts of Thembi in particular,

Aaah ... Little Rock Blues ... Origin ... Sweet and Lovely .... The great McCoy Tyner ... Elvin Jones ... and that awesome Richard Davis guy ... second only to the likes of Charlie Haden and Eberhard Weber IMO. And then there was Jean-Paul Bourelly. Did you ever hear his tribute album to Jimi Hendrix?

> I wish that [Thembi] had been recorded better...),

True.

> and I have to remember from time to time to continue my education beyond where I already am.

Same here.

> But ... have you tried checking out some of that totally and absolutely weird-sounding and exotic 12-tone equal temperament stuff? Alien. Really. Not at all like the real, totally natural, polyrhythmic stuff any _normal_ person naturally imbibes with their mother's milk. Whole civilizations out there play the stuff. Extraordinary!!! Never mind. Maybe they'll grow out of the experiment one day and return to more normal and natural sounds. (Controversy and Irony are My Middle Names!!)

Weird and exotic? What could be more "natural"? I thank the Powers That Be that *any* westerners bother to look for notes between all the pretty black and white keys ^_^