question
James Whitehead
and why they are either interested in it or make it. Or do they just see
creating music as subjective performances without dialogue or engagement
with anything else - and this n.g. a vehicle for promotion and sales
only. Is there anything to discuss?
--
James Whitehead
DC
Do dont talk. (thats why I subscribe to so many newsgroups ;-) )
--
_______________________________________________
DC
"You can not reason a man out of a position he did not reach through reason"
"Don't use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice."
"A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is
never sure." Segal's Law
James Whitehead
>>Is there anything to discuss?
>
>Do dont talk. (thats why I subscribe to so many newsgroups ;-) )
>
perceived situation - its not experimental or music as we knew it
though?
--
James Whitehead
Brent Colflesh
"James Whitehead" <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:b9OB5FAsUy$9E...@jliat.demon.co.uk...
Dear James,
You start - you've had a fair number of releases (that I know of) - give us
your long, sordid story.
Regards,
Brent
Alex Temple
There's plenty to discuss. But I've been overexposed to classical
composers who can't get over their joy at the fact that serialism is no
longer The Thing That Must Be Done, so I for one am pretty sick of
people being self-conscious about style.
More interesting, I think, is the matter of technique. Not, "is it
experimental [enough]?" or "what makes it experimental?" or "is it
valuable" but just "how is it done?" and "what was its inspiration?"
--
Alex Temple
fiber_optiq at yahoo dot com
"This Temple raving of the week is brought to you by Wayside,
proudly bringing you wierd avant shit since 1981" -Pr33t
D King
> James Whitehead wrote:
> >
> > is anyone interested is discussing the nature of experimental music -
> > and why they are either interested in it or make it. Or do they just see
> > creating music as subjective performances without dialogue or engagement
> > with anything else - and this n.g. a vehicle for promotion and sales
> > only. Is there anything to discuss?
>
> There's plenty to discuss. But I've been overexposed to classical
> composers who can't get over their joy at the fact that serialism is no
> longer The Thing That Must Be Done, so I for one am pretty sick of
> people being self-conscious about style.
>
> More interesting, I think, is the matter of technique. Not, "is it
> experimental [enough]?" or "what makes it experimental?" or "is it
> valuable" but just "how is it done?" and "what was its inspiration?"
I find myself having to work harder now, in order to get past a certain
"experimental" sound. It's getting easy for me these days to recognize
certain techniques in the music I normally listen to, and that keeps me
moving forward. I'm also interested in the relationship between an
"original" document and an "interpreted" performance.
For those who haven't subscribed yet, look into the microsound mailing
list (http://www.microsound.org) -- there is always a great deal of
discussion, covering theory and technique, gear, though not without the
inevitable playlists and promos (although guidelines discourage them).
Some group projects include http://www.microsound.org/parasites/ and
http://www.microsound.org/bufferfuct/.
James Whitehead
<water...@spamcop.net> writes
>In article <VelyBDADbh$9E...@jliat.demon.co.uk>, James Whitehead
>says...
>and a three-speed reel-to-reel tape deck. I heard some Stockhausen
>and Tangerine Dream (when they were good - 1975), and started doing
>my own stuff, moving on to home made electronics, etc. It's now part
>of my everyday life - there are a range of electronic and acoustic
>instruments scattered around my flat, that I pick up and play when
>the mood strikes me (during the adverts on TV, for instance), while
>the PC is often processing a sound file. Philosophically I'm with
>Wittgenstein - there is nothing to say.
>
Well i don't think you quite get Wittgenstein - do you mean what we
cannot speak about - so we cant speak about making music - is that what
you are saying - or its not worth speaking about it. In terms of
everyday life - teeth cleaning etc. we can at least offer a reason -
though we might not wish to. But is what you do whilst a commercial is
on TV "experimental" music - at all? Now i'll anticipate a reply - your
not bothered - or not prepared to speak about it - what about 'think
about it'? Maybe your position might be more typical than i originally
thought, which is why i raised this as a new thread.
Remember Wittgenstein at that point stopped doing philosophy.... could
you imagine asking a scientist what they get up to - and getting "i
never really thought about it .." as a reply. Or anyone else - surely if
there is nothing to say there is nothing in the music - its not music
anymore than the noise of my electric tooth brush is...
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
pammersTOd...@yahoo.com> writes
>James Whitehead wrote:
>>
>> is anyone interested is discussing the nature of experimental music -
>> and why they are either interested in it or make it. Or do they just see
>> creating music as subjective performances without dialogue or engagement
>> with anything else - and this n.g. a vehicle for promotion and sales
>> only. Is there anything to discuss?
>
>There's plenty to discuss.
I hope so - but lately not in this NG?
> But I've been overexposed to classical
>composers who can't get over their joy at the fact that serialism is no
>longer The Thing That Must Be Done, so I for one am pretty sick of
>people being self-conscious about style.
>
>More interesting, I think, is the matter of technique. Not, "is it
>experimental [enough]?" or "what makes it experimental?" or "is it
>valuable" but just "how is it done?" and "what was its inspiration?"
>
I'd like to take issue if we want the word "experimental" to mean
anything other than a genre title - that describes similar sounding
music. But you hit the button in asking about inspiration - isnt with
experimental - a kind of finding out?
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
Colflesh <bcol...@hotmail.com> writes
Hi Brent - i wasn't' into autobiography - but did cross into "music"
from "fine art" - but it struck me that maybe experimental - was not
"experimental" at all but as i say elsewhere just a genre. As for
"releases" these serve to document a process - and are not ends in
themselves - which is why i find the idea of performance within the term
experimental *interesting*. Surely you demonstrate -as opposed to
perform - but do not experiment? Or do you - can you actually experiment
- i remember seeing Derek Bailey not perform with his guitar.
--
James Whitehead
Alex Temple
>
> In article <3DFFA3D6...@yahoo.com>, Alex Temple <fiber_optiqWANTSs
> pammersTOd...@yahoo.com> writes
> >James Whitehead wrote:
> >>
> >> is anyone interested is discussing the nature of experimental music -
> >> and why they are either interested in it or make it. Or do they just see
> >> creating music as subjective performances without dialogue or engagement
> >> with anything else - and this n.g. a vehicle for promotion and sales
> >> only. Is there anything to discuss?
> >
> >There's plenty to discuss.
>
> I hope so - but lately not in this NG?
Has there /ever/ been much discussion in this NG?
>
> > But I've been overexposed to classical
> >composers who can't get over their joy at the fact that serialism is no
> >longer The Thing That Must Be Done, so I for one am pretty sick of
> >people being self-conscious about style.
> >
> >More interesting, I think, is the matter of technique. Not, "is it
> >experimental [enough]?" or "what makes it experimental?" or "is it
> >valuable" but just "how is it done?" and "what was its inspiration?"
> >
> I'd like to take issue if we want the word "experimental" to mean
> anything other than a genre title - that describes similar sounding
> music. But you hit the button in asking about inspiration - isnt with
> experimental - a kind of finding out?
I guess I do think of "experimental" as referring to, well, not one
genre, but a whole range of genres. I mean, I started reading this NG
because I listen to Henry Cow and Derek Bailey and Pere Ubu and Luciano
Berio, and hoped to find like-minded listeners.
But now that you mention it, much of my own work really /is/
experimental, in that I come up with a concept -- usually some bizarre
invented genre name like "avant-pastoral" or "noise-swing" -- and see if
I can make it work.
Alex Temple
>
> its not music
> anymore than the noise of my electric tooth brush is...
>
changed the shape of my mouth I could produce overtones... kind of like
an electrically-assisted version of throat singing. With proper
pickups, you could make some pretty cool music out of that. :)
Brent Colflesh
> invented genre name like "avant-pastoral" or "noise-swing" -- and see if
> I can make it work.
>
> --
> Alex Temple
Got a link? - I want to hear your take on "avant-pastoral" and
"noise-swing"!
Regards,
Brent
Alex Temple
http://isomerica.net/~electricwalrus/mp3s/
The "avant-pastoral" piece is 85.mp3 (title: "85% of the City").
The "noise-swing" piece is static_back.mp3 (title: "Static the Sky Back
into Submission").
Be warned, though, these pieces wound up coming out very differently
from their initial conception. The latter got updated to 50s/60s jazz
rather than swing, and the former... well, I could make comparisons and
name influences, but I'll just say it's pretty varied and pretty creepy,
and only parts of it are remotely pastoral.
(Incidentally, you could probably consider Death in June's "Behind the
Rose" to be "avant-pastoral." Interesting song. Wish the album it's
from were in print so I could hear the rest of it.)
If you like my stuff, I'll be self-releasing the full album hopefully by
early spring. I'll be sure to spam ... I mean post about it here. :)
James Whitehead
pammersTOd...@yahoo.com> writes
>James Whitehead wrote:
>>
>> its not music
>> anymore than the noise of my electric tooth brush is...
>>
>Actually, one time I was brushing my teeth, and I noticed that if I
>changed the shape of my mouth I could produce overtones... kind of like
>an electrically-assisted version of throat singing. With proper
>pickups, you could make some pretty cool music out of that. :)
>
used by people without vocal chords - throat cancer patients which
probably represent a refinement -
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
pammersTOd...@yahoo.com> writes
>James Whitehead wrote:
>>
>> In article <3DFFA3D6...@yahoo.com>, Alex Temple <fiber_optiqWANTSs
>> pammersTOd...@yahoo.com> writes
>> >James Whitehead wrote:
>> >>
>> >> is anyone interested is discussing the nature of experimental music -
>> >> and why they are either interested in it or make it. Or do they just see
>> >> creating music as subjective performances without dialogue or engagement
>> >> with anything else - and this n.g. a vehicle for promotion and sales
>> >> only. Is there anything to discuss?
>> >
>> >There's plenty to discuss.
>>
>> I hope so - but lately not in this NG?
>
>Has there /ever/ been much discussion in this NG?
I know - i was wondering why i subscribed?
>
>>
>> > But I've been overexposed to classical
>> >composers who can't get over their joy at the fact that serialism is no
>> >longer The Thing That Must Be Done, so I for one am pretty sick of
>> >people being self-conscious about style.
>> >
>> >More interesting, I think, is the matter of technique. Not, "is it
>> >experimental [enough]?" or "what makes it experimental?" or "is it
>> >valuable" but just "how is it done?" and "what was its inspiration?"
>> >
>> I'd like to take issue if we want the word "experimental" to mean
>> anything other than a genre title - that describes similar sounding
>> music. But you hit the button in asking about inspiration - isnt with
>> experimental - a kind of finding out?
>
>I guess I do think of "experimental" as referring to, well, not one
>genre, but a whole range of genres. I mean, I started reading this NG
>because I listen to Henry Cow and Derek Bailey and Pere Ubu and Luciano
>Berio, and hoped to find like-minded listeners.
>
>But now that you mention it, much of my own work really /is/
>experimental, in that I come up with a concept -- usually some bizarre
>invented genre name like "avant-pastoral" or "noise-swing" -- and see if
>I can make it work.
>
What do you mean by work?
--
James Whitehead
Alex Temple
>
> >But now that you mention it, much of my own work really /is/
> >experimental, in that I come up with a concept -- usually some bizarre
> >invented genre name like "avant-pastoral" or "noise-swing" -- and see if
> >I can make it work.
> >
> What do you mean by work?
Be enjoyable to listen to and hopefully emotionally powerful, rather
than boring.
James Whitehead
<water...@spamcop.net> writes
>In article <lbiuwCAh...@jliat.demon.co.uk>, James Whitehead
>says...
><snip>
>
>> Well i don't think you quite get Wittgenstein - do you mean what we
>> cannot speak about - so we cant speak about making music - is that
>> what you are saying - or its not worth speaking about it. In terms of
>> everyday life - teeth cleaning etc.
>
>natural expression of something - if it could be rendered (for want
>of a better word) in language, then I would, and the music would not
>happen. In the same way that when I paint or write, I could not
>convert these expressions to music.
But you are talking about music - and the quote of Wittgenstein was not
his last word.. Music can be discussed - is discussed - and in part a
co-operative enterprise. What you are describing above is not music - as
we once knew it - and maybe if that what its become - then we no longer
do have anything to say. "Experimental" seems to imply an experiment
with something - not just a presentation of a subjective act - with no
causality!
>
>> we can at least offer a reason - though we might not wish to.
>
>I am not aware that I have a reason, any more that I have a reason
>when I daydream, or scratch an itch, other than to satisfy the itch.
Well you might whilst scratching think about its cause? and the
purpose... of it all..
>
>> But is what you do whilst a commercial is on TV "experimental" music
>> - at all?
>
>Usually - occasionally I'll play something tuneful on the guitar
>instead, but that's not as satisfying as simply playing.
so one can regard this as just the noise you make whilst living - and
think no more about it.
>
>> Now i'll anticipate a reply - your not bothered - or not prepared to
>> speak about it - what about 'think about it'? Maybe your position
>> might be more typical than i originally thought, which is why i raised
>> this as a new thread.
>
>For quite some time I analysed why I did what I did - I wrote reams
>of philosophical bollocks. In the end I realised that I was wasting
>my time - I did not have enough faith in what I was doing, so I
>sought to explain it. Now I am more secure in my music.
>Interestingly, this only applies to solo stuff - I've always felt
>more comfortable with music I've played with others (although it
>tended to be less personal - more joyful).
>
>> Remember Wittgenstein at that point stopped doing philosophy.... could
>> you imagine asking a scientist what they get up to - and getting "i
>> never really thought about it .." as a reply. Or anyone else - surely if
>> there is nothing to say there is nothing in the music - its not music
>> anymore than the noise of my electric tooth brush is...
>
>IMHO art that requires explanation (unless the explanation is part of
>the artwork - for example Boltanski's boxes of photographs - it's the
>only way you'd know what was in the boxes!) suggests the artist lacks
>belief in the work. It should stand on it's own. And I see no link
>between science and art, except in the sense that both can involve
>research.
I don't see how your definition of art can involve research.
>
>NB: I don't expect anyone else to hold the same views - why should
>they? Art is, again IMHO, entirely personal. Who was it who said "art
>is that which, when it is perceived, is perceived as art"?
>
Though this doesn't fit the facts - we recognise certain behaviour as
making music - and to a large extent agree on what it is... you even do
this yourself - dividing up conceptually what is and isn't art or music
- but then not wanting to explore the basis of this dividing. Yet the
exploration of just this process could be .. was a rationale of the
experimentalism that was once found in what was once music. In seeking
to ask the question - i'm trying to avoid this conclusion - which is
based on the traffic here for sometime.
--
James Whitehead
Alfred Armstrong
> James Whitehead wrote:
>>
>> >But now that you mention it, much of my own work really /is/
>> >experimental, in that I come up with a concept -- usually some
>> >bizarre invented genre name like "avant-pastoral" or "noise-swing" --
>> >and see if I can make it work.
>> >
>> What do you mean by work?
>
> Be enjoyable to listen to and hopefully emotionally powerful, rather
> than boring.
>
Those mp3s you posted worked for me, Alex. Little gems like these are why I
subscribe, though there is an awful lot of dross.
Discussions about what experimental music is don't seem to get very far.
There don't seem to be many people on the group who are interested in
articulating their ideas. (That may be a good thing, considering the
heights of woolly pretentiousness reached by writers on magazines like The
Wire when treating some unusual musical phenomenon. Mediocre composers
often ape this style, presumably in an attempt to add credibility to their
offerings).
Should the music 'speak for itself'? Perhaps, but without a context of
discourse (there, I can do it too) - speaking as a listener rather than
a practitioner - it is difficult to explore what is on offer.
My turn for a question, now: what are the best web sites on experimental
music? Ones with real information, lots of links (unlike that microsound
one posted the other day) and a sense of buzz about them (other than mains
hum). Independent label sites with a black background, distressed typefaces
and no content except a list of artists you've never heard of, need not
apply.
--
Alfred Armstrong
Now! With added Dot.Communism: http://www.oddbooks.com/
"The eye has been described by scientists as a small-sized volcano"
- Webster Edgerly
James Whitehead
pammersTOd...@yahoo.com> writes
>James Whitehead wrote:
>>
>> >But now that you mention it, much of my own work really /is/
>> >experimental, in that I come up with a concept -- usually some bizarre
>> >invented genre name like "avant-pastoral" or "noise-swing" -- and see if
>> >I can make it work.
>> >
>> What do you mean by work?
>
>Be enjoyable to listen to and hopefully emotionally powerful, rather
>than boring.
>
--
James Whitehead
AgentA
help stimulate analysis though.
Why am I interested?
Prescribed music aiming for a mass audience mostly disappoints or irritates me.
While I enjoy an occassional pop tone, I have to seek out music that goes
beyond being superficially pleasing and/or stylistically trendy. It often
happens to be "experimental" music that has the substance required to
stimulate my third ear.
Likewise with creating music. I find results from experimenting more satisfying
than results I come up with by conventional means.
I'm okay with hearing the label used loosely.
I enjoy experiments conducted by doctors as well as by kids with gadgets.
I use ngs like this to find ways to hear and read about new music, primarily.
I lurk, sift for gold.
Power on,
AgentA
http://www.mp3.com/agenta
James Whitehead says...
is anyone interested is discussing the nature of experimental music -
and why they are either interested in it or make it. .......
AgentA
one's work is a waste of time. Explaining what should be apparent is not as
worthwhile as developing the work to make it apparent.
Using explanations to intrigue and bring a listener to the work is okay by me
though.
On the other hand, explanations can sometimes lead to less an understanding of
the subject. It becomes more about the explanation than about the subject it
is explaining.
The subject becomes remote.
It's rare to find explanations that supplement the subject.
Nonetheless, I'm glad for explanations, descriptions etc. as found in reviews
or fan commentaries, for navigation.
Andrew Cox (water...@spamcop.net):
>IMHO art that requires explanation (unless the explanation is part of
>the artwork - for example Boltanski's boxes of photographs - it's the
>only way you'd know what was in the boxes!) suggests the artist lacks
>belief in the work. It should stand on it's own. And I see no link
>between science and art, except in the sense that both can involve
>research.
Add developments brought about by new technology in both fields.
now n laters,
AgentA
http://www.mp3.com/agenta
AgentA
AgentA
there?)
In the meantime, I'm glad for leads such as the
http://www.microsound.org/parasites/ link that I find in this ng and others.
It was thanks to this ng's post about http://www.angbase.com/ that brought Kim
Cascone to my ears in the first place.
You never know how long a page or site will be up. Antenna Radio which host
Herb Levy's Mappings (20th century avant garde and 21st century new music;
difficult listening) currently has an out order sign posted.
The unofficial WIRE audio companion lead me to Kevin Drumm's astounding noise
sculpture, "the inferno" from his "Sheer Hellish Miasma".
but my link to it expired.
http://thewire.kargatron.net/
I also look for music on mp3.com and make playlists. Less often nowadays since
mp3.com continues to become more and more user UN-friendly. So if you're
looking for bona-fide experimental music and don't mind pop tones mixed in with
noise and ambient click here for the (still active) playlists directory:
http://members.aol.com/A4ne1/aok.html
Good luck,
AgentA
http://www.mp3.com/agnate
D King
> It was thanks to this ng's post about http://www.angbase.com/ that brought Kim
> Cascone to my ears in the first place.
Great site. There are 7 issues now, each one worth a full read.
Marian Try Slaughter
wrote:
>In article <lbiuwCAh...@jliat.demon.co.uk>, James Whitehead
>says...
><snip>
>
>> Well i don't think you quite get Wittgenstein - do you mean what we
>> cannot speak about - so we cant speak about making music - is that
>> what you are saying - or its not worth speaking about it. In terms of
>> everyday life - teeth cleaning etc.
>
>I mean that it cannot be discussed - it has no logical basis. It's a
>natural expression of something - if it could be rendered (for want
>of a better word) in language, then I would, and the music would not
>happen. In the same way that when I paint or write, I could not
>convert these expressions to music.
That actually doesn't hold, logically. You're claiming that the discussion
of music is music itself, and since it is not, that the discussion of music
is impossible, or at least irrelevant. There's a huge flaw in that.
Christ, if it makes you feel better, call it "meta-music". Although that's
a pretty pretentious way of referring to discussion about music...
"cultures that can identify taupe are just pretentious."
Simon - mhm27x5
Alex Temple
>
> >
> Those mp3s you posted worked for me, Alex. Little gems like these are why I
> subscribe, though there is an awful lot of dross.
Thanks!
> Discussions about what experimental music is don't seem to get very far.
> There don't seem to be many people on the group who are interested in
> articulating their ideas.
No, that's not right. The accurate statement is:
"There don't seem to be many people on the group."
:)
> My turn for a question, now: what are the best web sites on experimental
> music? Ones with real information, lots of links (unlike that microsound
> one posted the other day) and a sense of buzz about them (other than mains
> hum). Independent label sites with a black background, distressed typefaces
> and no content except a list of artists you've never heard of, need not
> apply.
>
None really come to mind, but I do remember finding some interesting
stuff at newmusicbox.org
--
Alex Temple - NP: Gentle Giant - Live: Playing the Fool
Alex Temple
"enjoyable to listen to" = entertainment
"emotionally powerful" = enlightenment
Alex Temple
>
> I don't believe one can separate art from non-art, except for how one
> perceives it at the current time. What I feel is art in one context,
> may not be art in a different context, or if I am in a less receptive
> frame of mind, etc.
I have a different interpretation of this. While I think that the
quality of a piece of art is subjective (i.e. you need to define what
criteria you're using before "good" and "bad" have any semantic
content), I think that art vs. non-art is a matter of artist's intent.
If someone takes something (their own work or someone else's, as in
Duchamp's readymades) and says "here, this is beautiful, so devote some
aesthetic intention to it," it's art. (And of course, I'm using
"beautiful" in the broadest possible sense.)
Marian Try Slaughter
wrote:
>In article <4b080vkfs8k01rqd6...@4ax.com>, Marian Try
>Slaughter says...
><snip>
>> >I mean that it cannot be discussed - it has no logical basis. It's a
>> >natural expression of something - if it could be rendered (for want
>> >of a better word) in language, then I would, and the music would not
>> >happen. In the same way that when I paint or write, I could not
>> >convert these expressions to music.
>>
>> That actually doesn't hold, logically. You're claiming that the discussion
>> of music is music itself, and since it is not, that the discussion of music
>> is impossible, or at least irrelevant. There's a huge flaw in that.
>>
>> Christ, if it makes you feel better, call it "meta-music". Although that's
>> a pretty pretentious way of referring to discussion about music...
>
>We're not talking about /talking about music/ - we were discussing
>musical philosophy. Philosophy is a search for wisdom about
>something.
I'd still wager that the same should hold.
np: a silver mt. zion memeorial orchestra & tra-la-la band - born into
trouble as the sparks fly upward
James Whitehead
>On Wed, 18 Dec 2002 19:28:53 -0000, Andrew Cox <water...@spamcop.net>
>wrote:
>
>>In article <lbiuwCAh...@jliat.demon.co.uk>, James Whitehead
>>says...
>><snip>
>>
>>> Well i don't think you quite get Wittgenstein - do you mean what we
>>> cannot speak about - so we cant speak about making music - is that
>>> what you are saying - or its not worth speaking about it. In terms of
>>> everyday life - teeth cleaning etc.
>>
>>I mean that it cannot be discussed - it has no logical basis. It's a
>>natural expression of something - if it could be rendered (for want
>>of a better word) in language, then I would, and the music would not
>>happen. In the same way that when I paint or write, I could not
>>convert these expressions to music.
>
>That actually doesn't hold, logically. You're claiming that the discussion
>of music is music itself, and since it is not,
why is it not? The development of western music certainly could be seen
as such - succeeding experimentation's with what is possible - first
within given structures (tonalities and a-tonalities) through to
exploring the concept of "music" itself - e,g. cage. Lets take this a
stage further - is music limited to sound vibrations - which somewhat
limits it to a feature of terrestrial life... if music is engaged or can
be in anything other than pleasant vibrations...
> that the discussion of music
>is impossible, or at least irrelevant. There's a huge flaw in that.
>
>Christ, if it makes you feel better, call it "meta-music".
Which is the process outlined above in "western music"
> Although that's
>a pretty pretentious way of referring to discussion about music...
>
Pretentious is interesting here - is art pretentious.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<water...@spamcop.net> writes
>In article <dhjAuGAk...@jliat.demon.co.uk>, James Whitehead
>says...
><snip>
>> Music can be discussed - is discussed - and in part a
>> co-operative enterprise. What you are describing above is not music - as
>> we once knew it - and maybe if that what its become - then we no longer
>> do have anything to say.
>
not ever? I think it might well be - isn't music philosophising about
music - or at least wasn't "serious" music just this.
>
>I am happy to talk about music, about the creation of music, etc.
>
to engage in a creative discussion is to do it.
>
>> "Experimental" seems to imply an experiment with something - not just a
>> presentation of a subjective act - with no causality!
>
>Experiment has more than one meaning - I believe we are using
>different ones. Mine would be (From the American Heritage Dictionary
>via dictionary.com):
>
>To try something new, especially in order to gain experience
>
Just as experience without qualification sounds like boredom avoidance.
I think Alex doesn't see boredom as being valid - but it has been one
reaction to the "new".
>
><snip>
>> >I am not aware that I have a reason, any more that I have a reason
>> >when I daydream, or scratch an itch, other than to satisfy the itch.
>>
>> Well you might whilst scratching think about its cause? and the
>> purpose... of it all..
>
>Not if the itch has been occurring continuously for the last 27
>years. As I said - I tried the philosophical argument for many years
>- there was nothing to find. You may have a different view - this
>does not mean that mine is wrong.
Of course not - but what you seem to be saying is that there isn't a
view - in your case.
>
>
><snip>
>> so one can regard this as just the noise you make whilst living - and
>> think no more about it.
>
>Not noise - but music.
But we now know that noise is music... that experiment was made some
time ago
>
><snip>
>> I don't see how your definition of art can involve research.
>
>Research in technique, in the tools used, to find what works (is
>satisfying).
here we have "works" is satisfying - these seem exceptions to a
tradition which gave us experimentalism - not of course your variety.
>
>
><snip>
>> we recognise certain behaviour as making music - and to a large
>> extent agree on what it is... you even do this yourself -
>> dividing up conceptually what is and isn't art or music
>
>I don't believe one can separate art from non-art, except for how one
>perceives it at the current time. What I feel is art in one context,
>may not be art in a different context, or if I am in a less receptive
>frame of mind, etc.
Exactly - so its an intellectual activity - not one which is primarily
about instruments and techniques. I agree with these intentions - and
would wonder where they lead.
>
>
>> - but then not wanting to explore the basis of this dividing
><snip>
>
>It is not about what I /want/ to do - there is, for me, nothing to
>do. I did not choose to change my views - my views changed. I do not
>/choose/ to Do Art - it is a function of who I am.
>
>I am not claiming that all people function in the same way, or that
>my way is /right/ or /better/. It is simply how/who I am.
>
>
But what you are hinting at that the basis of music is not sound but
some intellectual activity. Which is interesting for me (i doubt you'd
agree) but makes this newsgroup have the potential to be more of a set
of cards you see stuck up in music shops - but an actual part of
"musical" experimentalism itself. I'm maybe being too optimistic here -
but its certainly a possibility if anyone else is interested. Its
something perhaps long overdue in music - and we have some templates and
lessons already learnt from fine art.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<water...@spamcop.net> writes>Slaughter says...
><snip>
>> >I mean that it cannot be discussed - it has no logical basis. It's a
>> >natural expression of something - if it could be rendered (for want
>> >of a better word) in language, then I would, and the music would not
>> >happen. In the same way that when I paint or write, I could not
>> >convert these expressions to music.
>>
>> That actually doesn't hold, logically. You're claiming that the discussion
>> of music is music itself, and since it is not, that the discussion of music
>> is impossible, or at least irrelevant. There's a huge flaw in that.
>>
>> Christ, if it makes you feel better, call it "meta-music". Although that's
>> a pretty pretentious way of referring to discussion about music...
>
>musical philosophy. Philosophy is a search for wisdom about
>something.
>
for another newsgroup - which my point is - what is - or what could be a
purpose for this newsgroup.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<thspacei...@aol.comspace> writes
>I haven't really examined why I enjoy experimental music, threads like these
>help stimulate analysis though.
>
>Why am I interested?
>Prescribed music aiming for a mass audience mostly disappoints or irritates me.
>While I enjoy an occassional pop tone, I have to seek out music that goes
>beyond being superficially pleasing and/or stylistically trendy. It often
>happens to be "experimental" music that has the substance required to
>stimulate my third ear.
>
>Likewise with creating music. I find results from experimenting more satisfying
>than results I come up with by conventional means.
>
>I'm okay with hearing the label used loosely.
>I enjoy experiments conducted by doctors as well as by kids with gadgets.
>
But we have the opportunity of experimentation with ideas about music
within this NG - without recourse to expensive equipment - other than
the computers we already have to have to be here.
>I use ngs like this to find ways to hear and read about new music, primarily.
>
>I lurk, sift for gold.
>
>Power on,
>AgentA
>http://www.mp3.com/agenta
>
>
>James Whitehead says...
> is anyone interested is discussing the nature of experimental music -
>and why they are either interested in it or make it. .......
>- and this n.g. a vehicle for promotion and sales
> only. Is there anything to discuss?
>
>
>
>
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
pammersTOd...@yahoo.com> writes
>James Whitehead wrote:
>>
>> In article <3E02D8CD...@yahoo.com>, Alex Temple <fiber_optiqWANTSs
>> pammersTOd...@yahoo.com> writes
>> >James Whitehead wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >But now that you mention it, much of my own work really /is/
>> >> >experimental, in that I come up with a concept -- usually some bizarre
>> >> >invented genre name like "avant-pastoral" or "noise-swing" -- and see if
>> >> >I can make it work.
>> >> >
>> >> What do you mean by work?
>> >
>> >Be enjoyable to listen to and hopefully emotionally powerful, rather
>> >than boring.
>> >
>> so entertainment rather than enlightenment...
>
>"enjoyable to listen to" = entertainment
>"emotionally powerful" = enlightenment
>
experiment isn't primarily associated with entertainment - and certainly
i doubt very much if that was true of the pioneers of experimental music
- or are powerful emotions particularly enlightening. Again
enlightenment has been associated with avoidance - renunciation of the
burning passions... What you seem to be describing sounds a bit like
rock n roll.
--
James Whitehead
Alex Temple
>
> In article <3E048DBF...@yahoo.com>, Alex Temple says...
> > Andrew Cox wrote:
> > >
> > > I don't believe one can separate art from non-art, except for how one
> > > perceives it at the current time. What I feel is art in one context,
> > > may not be art in a different context, or if I am in a less receptive
> > > frame of mind, etc.
> >
> > I have a different interpretation of this. While I think that the
> > quality of a piece of art is subjective (i.e. you need to define what
> > criteria you're using before "good" and "bad" have any semantic
> > content), I think that art vs. non-art is a matter of artist's intent.
> > If someone takes something (their own work or someone else's, as in
> > Duchamp's readymades) and says "here, this is beautiful, so devote some
> > aesthetic intention to it," it's art. (And of course, I'm using
> > "beautiful" in the broadest possible sense.)
>
> object as a piece of art, only to find that they were lying, and it
> was not created as art? Does it stop being art? Does your
> appreciation of it change?
No: by stating that it was art, they made you perceive it artistically.
> Also, how about the Thai Elephant Orchestra(1) - is what they produce
> music?
>
> (1) http://www.mulatta.org/Thaielephantorch.html
Yes, in the same way that found art is art. The elephants might be the
artists, but even if they're not, the human beings packaging it for
artistic appreciation turn it into art.
Alex Temple
>
> In article <3E048C95...@yahoo.com>, Alex Temple <fiber_optiqWANTSs
> pammersTOd...@yahoo.com> writes
> >James Whitehead wrote:
> >>
> >> In article <3E02D8CD...@yahoo.com>, Alex Temple <fiber_optiqWANTSs
> >> pammersTOd...@yahoo.com> writes
> >> >James Whitehead wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> >But now that you mention it, much of my own work really /is/
> >> >> >experimental, in that I come up with a concept -- usually some bizarre
> >> >> >invented genre name like "avant-pastoral" or "noise-swing" -- and see if
> >> >> >I can make it work.
> >> >> >
> >> >> What do you mean by work?
> >> >
> >> >Be enjoyable to listen to and hopefully emotionally powerful, rather
> >> >than boring.
> >> >
> >> so entertainment rather than enlightenment...
> >
> >"enjoyable to listen to" = entertainment
> >"emotionally powerful" = enlightenment
> >
>
> experiment isn't primarily associated with entertainment - and certainly
> i doubt very much if that was true of the pioneers of experimental music
> - or are powerful emotions particularly enlightening. Again
> enlightenment has been associated with avoidance - renunciation of the
> burning passions... What you seem to be describing sounds a bit like
> rock n roll.
"Rock 'n' roll" can have this effect, certainly. So can Berio tape music.
rzzaj
LOTS of links to interesting/"out" bands, reviews, interviews, etc.
Ciao,
Zzaj
"Alfred Armstrong" <alf...@SPAMBEGONEoddbooks.co.uk> wrote in message
news:Xns92EA6249...@193.195.219.209...
rzzaj
If you haven't been there already, you may want to visit our SAMPLES page,
at:
http://home.attbi.com/~rotcod/Samples.htm
We've got a LOT of different experimental band/sounds posted up there....
Ciao,
Zzaj
"AgentA" <thspacei...@aol.comspace> wrote in message
news:20021220142307...@mb-ca.aol.com...
AgentA
"But we have the opportunity of experimentation with ideas about music
within this NG - without recourse to expensive equipment - other than
the computers we already have to have to be here."
Aha, I think I know what your getting at.
I mean there were some bulletin boards I used to visit that would take the
opportunity.
I haven't been to ElectronicScene.com for awhile but their bulletin board might
be up your alley.
http://www.electronicscene.com/
This past summer there was a hefty amount of discussion on the Philadelphia
Ambient Consortium list
http://www.simpletone.com
concerning various (free) softwares, techniques and points of view regarding
music made on the computer. Is this what you don't find here?
sleeptalking,
AgentA
http://www.mp3.com/agnate
AgentA
"experimental" sound. It's getting easy for me these days to recognize
certain techniques in the music I normally listen to, and that keeps me
moving forward."
Sounds like you got the spirit. Power on.
Makes me consider the context in which one deems music to be experimental.
There's "Experimental" in the context of the individual developing their
technique and creativity by trying something new.
The results primarily affecting the individual.
Then there's "Experimental" in the context of the individual developing the
culture they find themselves in; because their results not only affect their
own development but others as well. For example, John Cage's revolutionary
"Williams Mix" of 1955(?) is probably one of the reasons dj culture exists. I
know it's a stretch but plausible.
Especially, if you believe in the hundreth monkey idea
http://www.appleseeds.org/100_monkeys_Keyes.htm
However, you could interpret this idea to suggest that someone playing their
bong through an echoplex has an lasting effect that extends beyond themselves
and should be considered experimental with a capital E.
There's a Merzbrow in every home, you just have to turn it up.
JUST kidding,
AgentA
http://www.deucemachina
np: room ambience
D.King:
"For those who haven't subscribed yet, look into the microsound mailing
list (http://www.microsound.org) -- there is always a great deal of
discussion, covering theory and technique, gear, though not without the
inevitable playlists and promos (although guidelines discourage them).
Some group projects include http://www.microsound.org/parasites/ and
http://www.microsound.org/bufferfuct/"
AgentA
Alex Temple
>
> There's a Merzbrow in every home, you just have to turn it up.
Then you'd have one raised 'brow, huh?
--
Alex Temple - NP: (The Real) Tuesday Weld - The Original Soundtrack of
Glen Duncan's I, Lucifer
Om shanti
<water...@spamcop.net> wrote:
> Also, how about the Thai Elephant Orchestra(1) - is what they produce
> music?
Hey, I love the Thai Elephant Orchestra. And of course it's music.
Someone said it is, after all.
Om shanti
Om shanti
<jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> experiment isn't primarily associated with entertainment - and certainly
> i doubt very much if that was true of the pioneers of experimental music
> - or are powerful emotions particularly enlightening. Again
> enlightenment has been associated with avoidance - renunciation of the
> burning passions... What you seem to be describing sounds a bit like
> rock n roll.
An emotional experience is often the very foundation of enlightenment.
From the Damascus experience to Joyce's epiphany theory, enlightenment
and emotion have been parts of each other, as yin and yang, even in our
emotion-fearing Western world. This is as it should be.
Now, clearly if you're talking about Ussachevsky and Luening, for
instance, or early Steve Reich (Pendulum Music, for instance), when the
"process" (to use Reich's term) is everything, then entertainment is
hardly an issue. If, however, you're talking about Thaddeus Cahill's
Telharmonium (which was intended to play parlor songs) or Raymond
Scott's work with single-time stochastic compositions on the
Electronium (which was primarily a generator of "groove" rhythms, and
why Berry Gordy from Motown was so interested in it), then
"entertainment" is certainly part of the equation. Is Reich "more"
experimental than Raymond Scott? I hardly think so. Is Nam June Paik's
symphony of the aeons necessarily more "experimental" than Laurie
Spiegel's electronic work (which is amazingly close to American folk
music in many ways)? I still do not think so.
Enlightenment is only associated with avoidance by people who avoid
enlightenment. The varieties of religious experience tend to be
primarily emotional, as, I think, humankind itself tends to be
primarily emotional. And experience and experiment are similar words
for a reason here. Emotions guide every single enlightenment, as surely
as proprioception guides every sense, and as surely as the autonomic
nervous system guides the brain. After all, is it not equally
enlightening to perceive the wholeness of the human mind with all its
categories in order? It is just as possible to reach enlightenment
through reading William Blake, I think, as it is by reading Stephen
Hawking.
It's certainly possible, though, to be enlightened by both. If it
weren't, music would have no power. Its effects are not achieved
through pure structure, any more than poetry achieves its effect by
adherence to iambic pentameter or kenning. These are the vehicle and
not the cargo.
But since the original question remains, I shall answer you "Yes." Yes,
of course it is possible to carry on meaningful conversations about
experimental music. I am sure many people on this NG have an interest
in knowledge, and I know of none who think theirs is sufficient. I tend
to see that people I know interested in experimental music search for
new things regularly, because part of why they experiment stems from
their desire to expand the boundaries of the possible as well as the
simply acceptable.
Such conversations need not devolve into argot, or ever once mention
French philosophy or the Tractatus or the research of Kuleshov or
anything else suitably academic. I, for one, despise academicians and
their brutality toward the English language as well as toward truthful
comprehension. So, no, I won't carry on at great length about polar
rotations around an axial tone, or flowcharts for development of
stochasticism, or the varying sonorities of rubber and paper mutes in
brass instruments. Why? Because only other musicians care about that,
and even then, not necessarily couched in such language as that.
I will certainly discuss the history of electronic and
computer-generated music in a fairly clear manner. I will definitely
enjoy conversations about the links between avant-garde uses of
sampling and cut-and-scratch electronic hip-hop. And oh yes, I will
dote on topics like improvisation in experimental music, and controlled
randomness in composition (John Zorn's Cobra, for instance). I will
gush about Tod Dockstader, Paul Lansky, The Jazz Composers' Orchestra,
Annea Lockwood, Johanna Beyer, Ornette Coleman, Can, Diamanda Galas,
Negativland and The Residents.
I think the newsgroup needs a healthy alternation of generality and
specific. Subjects should be at least somewhat general in address at
first, and not completely esoteric. Partly I think that's simply
finding the right tone for the audience--first rule of rhetoric, you
know. And partly it's because not all of us in the audience care about
exclusive techniques: things that are "only" used in electronic music,
or "only" used in improvised jazz, or "only" used by Karlheinz
Stockhausen. That way, everyone can learn something, maybe something
from another field, and apply it to their own work.
I hope that answers things a little. I've certainly spent too many
words, but I pray it is at least legible.
Humbly,
Om shanti
Alex Temple
>
[a lot]
Excellent post! (Though "despising" academics is a bit extreme, don't
you think?)
James Whitehead
<bc...@scnnospam.org> writes
>In article <hEjfnSAg...@jliat.demon.co.uk>, James Whitehead
><jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> experiment isn't primarily associated with entertainment - and certainly
>> i doubt very much if that was true of the pioneers of experimental music
>> - or are powerful emotions particularly enlightening. Again
>> enlightenment has been associated with avoidance - renunciation of the
>> burning passions... What you seem to be describing sounds a bit like
>> rock n roll.
>
>An emotional experience is often the very foundation of enlightenment.
>From the Damascus experience to Joyce's epiphany theory, enlightenment
>and emotion have been parts of each other, as yin and yang, even in our
>emotion-fearing Western world. This is as it should be.
I'm not sure i follow - enlightenment may have associated emotions - or
it might not - or one can gain enlightenment via an emotional state?
which music can place us in?
>
>Now, clearly if you're talking about Ussachevsky and Luening, for
>instance, or early Steve Reich (Pendulum Music, for instance), when the
>"process" (to use Reich's term) is everything, then entertainment is
>hardly an issue. If, however, you're talking about Thaddeus Cahill's
>Telharmonium (which was intended to play parlor songs) or Raymond
>Scott's work with single-time stochastic compositions on the
>Electronium (which was primarily a generator of "groove" rhythms, and
>why Berry Gordy from Motown was so interested in it), then
>"entertainment" is certainly part of the equation. Is Reich "more"
>experimental than Raymond Scott? I hardly think so. Is Nam June Paik's
>symphony of the aeons necessarily more "experimental" than Laurie
>Spiegel's electronic work (which is amazingly close to American folk
>music in many ways)? I still do not think so.
>
I think i would want to distinguish here between "experimental Devices"
and an experimental attitude or purpose with regard to music itself -
formalism if you like, where entertainment is only a by-product.
>Enlightenment is only associated with avoidance by people who avoid
>enlightenment. The varieties of religious experience tend to be
>primarily emotional, as, I think, humankind itself tends to be
>primarily emotional. And experience and experiment are similar words
>for a reason here. Emotions guide every single enlightenment, as surely
>as proprioception guides every sense, and as surely as the autonomic
>nervous system guides the brain. After all, is it not equally
>enlightening to perceive the wholeness of the human mind with all its
>categories in order? It is just as possible to reach enlightenment
>through reading William Blake, I think, as it is by reading Stephen
>Hawking.
I would say no - in that there is a difference in and between Hawking
and Blake - and more empirical experiment and theory. The picture of
Newton by Blake should bring out this difference if you know it. The
dark Satanic Mills - are mechanistic thought after all... not to say its
not impossible to gain enlightenment from any source - a dung heap or a
Bill Haley song...
There is something different in or between experiment and experience -
unless one takes everything as an experiment that is perceived. But i
cant see how this relates to the idea of proof - associated with
experiment. I'm not sure i'd see Reich as experimental - well if so only
minimally, i'd be interested in your thoughts on Cage and Stockhausen..
>
>It's certainly possible, though, to be enlightened by both. If it
>weren't, music would have no power. Its effects are not achieved
>through pure structure, any more than poetry achieves its effect by
>adherence to iambic pentameter or kenning. These are the vehicle and
>not the cargo.
That's a highly contentious statement. For the means of delivery of the
bomb maybe irrelevant to its effects - you are it seems saying we
needn't bother with musical form - well what else is there peculiar to
music. FED Express or UPS ?
>
>But since the original question remains, I shall answer you "Yes." Yes,
>of course it is possible to carry on meaningful conversations about
>experimental music. I am sure many people on this NG have an interest
>in knowledge, and I know of none who think theirs is sufficient. I tend
>to see that people I know interested in experimental music search for
>new things regularly, because part of why they experiment stems from
>their desire to expand the boundaries of the possible as well as the
>simply acceptable.
Then lets see them saying so? Thats what i find strange? No one here
wants to talk about the nature of what they are trying to deliver - or
the nature of the delivery system - if the two differ... what seems to
go on it a certain type of noise - and its promotion. A marketing of a
commodity...
>
>Such conversations need not devolve into argot, or ever once mention
>French philosophy or the Tractatus or the research of Kuleshov or
>anything else suitably academic. I, for one, despise academicians and
>their brutality toward the English language as well as toward truthful
>comprehension. So, no, I won't carry on at great length about polar
>rotations around an axial tone, or flowcharts for development of
>stochasticism, or the varying sonorities of rubber and paper mutes in
>brass instruments. Why? Because only other musicians care about that,
>and even then, not necessarily couched in such language as that.
>
Only other musicians - well and others interested - but this is a
newsgroup where - if such thoughts are relevant- they should be
discussed - they are not it seems. And you say you will not carry on...
and no one else is also - it seems. If someone was interested in
Experimental Music - in what its concerns are - its history - its point
- then this newsgroup would not be a suitable place for finding out -
would it? We see no discussion about this - but a continual drip of
self-promotional posts - of what is not experimental music at all! Well
if it is it would be nice to know how and why?
>I will certainly discuss the history of electronic and
>computer-generated music in a fairly clear manner. I will definitely
>enjoy conversations about the links between avant-garde uses of
>sampling and cut-and-scratch electronic hip-hop. And oh yes, I will
>dote on topics like improvisation in experimental music, and controlled
>randomness in composition (John Zorn's Cobra, for instance). I will
>gush about Tod Dockstader, Paul Lansky, The Jazz Composers' Orchestra,
>Annea Lockwood, Johanna Beyer, Ornette Coleman, Can, Diamanda Galas,
>Negativland and The Residents.
>
>I think the newsgroup needs a healthy alternation of generality and
>specific. Subjects should be at least somewhat general in address at
>first, and not completely esoteric. Partly I think that's simply
>finding the right tone for the audience--first rule of rhetoric, you
>know. And partly it's because not all of us in the audience care about
>exclusive techniques: things that are "only" used in electronic music,
>or "only" used in improvised jazz, or "only" used by Karlheinz
>Stockhausen. That way, everyone can learn something, maybe something
>from another field, and apply it to their own work.
>
>I hope that answers things a little. I've certainly spent too many
>words, but I pray it is at least legible.
>
The audience seems to be non existent in the main - or at least not much
bothered. I do like the phrase "controlled randomness" it seems to
explain why - why lots of things are now - well controlled to the point
of non-existence. (As opposed to be so experimental as to remain silent)
--
James Whitehead
Om shanti
<jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> I'm not sure i follow - enlightenment may have associated emotions - or
> it might not - or one can gain enlightenment via an emotional state?
> which music can place us in?
Okay, professor, now you're talking up my interest. My belief, and my
empirical observation and experience, is that one can certainly gain
enlightenment through emotional states. Again, the nature of the
dithyramb and the Eleusinian mysteries--music leads to flesh-eating
which leads to religious enlightenment. Obviously, that's the short
version, but it will do. I am completely and totally curious about what
makes music work, what effect music has, what it all means and so
forth.
> I think i would want to distinguish here between "experimental Devices"
> and an experimental attitude or purpose with regard to music itself -
> formalism if you like, where entertainment is only a by-product.
Okay. Formalism it is, then. In which case, I would definitely call
Steve Reich experimental. I'm talking about the early music: "Come
Out", "Violin Phase", "It's Gonna Rain", "Four Organs". In fact he's
not all that different from Ligeti in many ways. Compare Ligeti's
"Volumina" with Reich's "Four Organs" and you may be surprised how
similar they are in inquiry. The fact that Reich is largely tonal
doesn't make him less of an experimenter. Beethoven's Grosse Fugue is
tonal, after all. So is Gesualdo, and even Varese at most times.
It's an interesting question, though. What separates experimental
devices from an experimental attitude exactly? Reich's phasing music
was the product of an accident, as so many "experimental" foundations
are: Kandinsky's abstract paintings, the Prince of Serendip and his
discovery of radiation, Pasteur, Archimedes--on and on. Sometimes such
accidents become the basis for an entire lifetime of inquiry that is no
longer "innovative" but rather bent on refinement. Cezanne, for
instance. Do you mean that an experimental attitude must constantly
strive for "innovation"? I'm curious.
> I would say no - in that there is a difference in and between Hawking
> and Blake - and more empirical experiment and theory. The picture of
> Newton by Blake should bring out this difference if you know it. The
> dark Satanic Mills - are mechanistic thought after all... not to say its
> not impossible to gain enlightenment from any source - a dung heap or a
> Bill Haley song...
I know that painting very well indeed. Blake hated Newton, Voltaire,
Rousseau--the cosmic mockers, as he referred to them. Yet I'd have to
say that each of those men received enlightenment in ways that Blake
himself never imagined. Newton discovering gravity, Voltaire losing all
his ideals about "perfectability" after the Lisbon earthquake, and
Rousseau building a career of social engineering on the fact that he
was accused of stealing a pen as a child. To each his own sort of
enlightenment, I think. Enlightenment comes from numerous sources, and
doesn't always involve the holy choir singing. Doubtless someone has
had a life-altering epiphany watching "Man About The House." I am not
that one, but surely one exists.
> There is something different in or between experiment and experience -
> unless one takes everything as an experiment that is perceived. But i
> cant see how this relates to the idea of proof - associated with
> experiment. I'm not sure i'd see Reich as experimental - well if so only
> minimally, i'd be interested in your thoughts on Cage and Stockhausen..
I'm not a big fan of Cage. I consider him a rather dull jester most of
the time. I'm particularly numbed to boredom by his 4' 33", Number
pieces, and--well, most of his famous work, actually. I'm sure it's a
flaw in me, but I find my Western musicians posturing about Zen and
Eastern philosophy to be complete rubbish, and Cage is typical.
Stockhausen I adore, on the other hand. I'm very partial to his recent
Helicopter Quartet with the Arditti folks, but Gesang des Junglinges is
surely one of the great works of electronic music, and Kontakte and
Spiral are equally striking, I think.
> That's a highly contentious statement. For the means of delivery of the
> bomb maybe irrelevant to its effects - you are it seems saying we
> needn't bother with musical form - well what else is there peculiar to
> music. FED Express or UPS ?
I'm saying nothing of the sort. I'm saying pure form in and of itself
means nothing. I. A. Richards did a wonderful destroy job on this sort
of belief in modern poetry, just as George Bernard Shaw did a wonderful
destroy job on this idea in music. Form is means. If there is one thing
on which I agree with John Cage, it is that form is highly overrated,
hence his dabblings in "conceptual" music. I think ideas are important.
I know this is an archaic viewpoint in these days of oh-so-hip and
verrry Frennnnsh intellectual bombast, but I hold to it. The "form" for
instance of Earle Brown's "December 1952" is--well, what is it?
Scribbles on paper. Cute linear convergences. Squares. Rectangles.
Completely subjective to the performers. No two performances sound the
same. So where's the "form"? Where's the form of improvised music?
Where's the form of John Zorn's "Cobra"? Obviously these musics are
conceived and executed. One could transcribe them note for note and
miss the very point of the music. It's not about the "notes" or the
formal array, but about something else.
> Then lets see them saying so? Thats what i find strange? No one here
> wants to talk about the nature of what they are trying to deliver - or
> the nature of the delivery system - if the two differ... what seems to
> go on it a certain type of noise - and its promotion. A marketing of a
> commodity...
Well, I like noise, certainly. But I gather your point is that there is
not much discussion of *music* itself on the NG. This is sad, but I
happen to find it true as well. I've heard a fair amount of
experimental music, and I've heard a fair amount of music from people
on this very newsgroup--Paul Lansky, for instance, often checks in. I
have also found that even people whose music I adore (like Lansky's) do
not talk much about music or technique or anything else here.
I won't bemoan the point. I will simply add what I can to the
newsgroup, as I am doing now.
> Only other musicians - well and others interested - but this is a
> newsgroup where - if such thoughts are relevant- they should be
> discussed - they are not it seems. And you say you will not carry on...
> and no one else is also - it seems. If someone was interested in
> Experimental Music - in what its concerns are - its history - its point
> - then this newsgroup would not be a suitable place for finding out -
> would it? We see no discussion about this - but a continual drip of
> self-promotional posts - of what is not experimental music at all! Well
> if it is it would be nice to know how and why?
Agreed. What makes The Red Masque's music experimental? Of course, the
glib answer is that it is because they call it that, but the underlying
question is "what is the experiment?" and I have no answer for that.
Sometimes I can figure it out, other times not. It doesn't stop me from
liking them, though.
> The audience seems to be non existent in the main - or at least not much
> bothered. I do like the phrase "controlled randomness" it seems to
> explain why - why lots of things are now - well controlled to the point
> of non-existence. (As opposed to be so experimental as to remain silent)
Again, going back to bogus Eastern philosophy, I think. It's so Zen
just to sit and listen to nature. Silence is music. Blah, blah, blah.
More leftovers from Cage, McPhee, Riley...oh well. I'm sure it has its
place.
Part of the problem also is the typical and trite postmodernist
posture: "It's all been done, so there's no ground to break, and
besides, there's enough material out there for us to rip off so why
create anything? There are no artists, no authors, it's just culture,
and so every idea is mine as much as it is someone else's." This is
just the sort of attitude in academia that makes me begin to cough and
vomit blood, but it's seeped down into the other strata of society.
Fraudulent ideas tend not to like too much analysis, so that may
explain why most "experimental" people are silent about their work, at
least in part.
So, Mr. Whitehead--what do you propose?
Yours,
Omar
rzzaj
> Okay, professor, now you're talking up my interest. My belief, and my
> empirical observation and experience, is that one can certainly gain
> enlightenment through emotional states.
Mostly, and most interestingly (I think), from the contrasts... dark emotion
(when doing music) has nowhere to go BUT towards light...
> It's an interesting question, though. What separates experimental
> devices from an experimental attitude exactly? Reich's phasing music
> was the product of an accident, as so many "experimental" foundations
> are: Kandinsky's abstract paintings, the Prince of Serendip and his
> discovery of radiation, Pasteur, Archimedes--on and on. Sometimes such
> accidents become the basis for an entire lifetime of inquiry that is no
> longer "innovative" but rather bent on refinement. Cezanne, for
> instance. Do you mean that an experimental attitude must constantly
> strive for "innovation"? I'm curious.
It's just a natural course of events, methinks... the "innovation" is the
end result of the process of experimentation... OR, there IS no innovation,
& it turns out to be a "pop" tune...
> I'm saying nothing of the sort. I'm saying pure form in and of itself
> means nothing. I. A. Richards did a wonderful destroy job on this sort
> of belief in modern poetry, just as George Bernard Shaw did a wonderful
> destroy job on this idea in music. Form is means. If there is one thing
> on which I agree with John Cage, it is that form is highly overrated,
> hence his dabblings in "conceptual" music. I think ideas are important.
> I know this is an archaic viewpoint in these days of oh-so-hip and
> verrry Frennnnsh intellectual bombast, but I hold to it. The "form" for
> instance of Earle Brown's "December 1952" is--well, what is it?
> Scribbles on paper. Cute linear convergences. Squares. Rectangles.
> Completely subjective to the performers. No two performances sound the
> same. So where's the "form"? Where's the form of improvised music?
> Where's the form of John Zorn's "Cobra"? Obviously these musics are
> conceived and executed. One could transcribe them note for note and
> miss the very point of the music. It's not about the "notes" or the
> formal array, but about something else.
Still, "formlessness" (I believe) is a part of any artistic endeavor, in the
overall:
The essence of my being
Is fluid in your mold
In hotly desert days
Or barren tundra cold
Of Disneylands
And corporate plans
Offered us as solace
For the crumbled ethics
Of those who worship form
And shed their plastic tears
When the pattern calls
For their own designs...
> Well, I like noise, certainly. But I gather your point is that there is
> not much discussion of *music* itself on the NG. This is sad, but I
> happen to find it true as well. I've heard a fair amount of
> experimental music, and I've heard a fair amount of music from people
> on this very newsgroup--Paul Lansky, for instance, often checks in. I
> have also found that even people whose music I adore (like Lansky's) do
> not talk much about music or technique or anything else here.
More than likely because they are too busy making music... OR, taking a
respite from creation...
> Agreed. What makes The Red Masque's music experimental? Of course, the
> glib answer is that it is because they call it that, but the underlying
> question is "what is the experiment?" and I have no answer for that.
> Sometimes I can figure it out, other times not. It doesn't stop me from
> liking them, though.
One man's experiment is another's "regular", perhaps? Then, too, much of
the music I've done that I consider to BE experimental certainly didn't seem
that way when we were DOING it!
> Again, going back to bogus Eastern philosophy, I think. It's so Zen
> just to sit and listen to nature. Silence is music. Blah, blah, blah.
> More leftovers from Cage, McPhee, Riley...oh well. I'm sure it has its
> place.
All part of the "mystique", eh?
> Part of the problem also is the typical and trite postmodernist
> posture: "It's all been done, so there's no ground to break, and
> besides, there's enough material out there for us to rip off so why
> create anything? There are no artists, no authors, it's just culture,
> and so every idea is mine as much as it is someone else's." This is
> just the sort of attitude in academia that makes me begin to cough and
> vomit blood, but it's seeped down into the other strata of society.
> Fraudulent ideas tend not to like too much analysis, so that may
> explain why most "experimental" people are silent about their work, at
> least in part.
Well, WE'RE not "silent" about it... feel free to visit & sample...
http://home.attbi.com/~rotcod/Samples.htm
James Whitehead
<bc...@scnnospam.org> writes
>In article <pOq91AAU...@jliat.demon.co.uk>, James Whitehead
><jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> I'm not sure i follow - enlightenment may have associated emotions - or
>> it might not - or one can gain enlightenment via an emotional state?
>> which music can place us in?
>
>Okay, professor,
> now you're talking up my interest. My belief, and my
>empirical observation and experience, is that one can certainly gain
>enlightenment through emotional states. Again, the nature of the
>dithyramb and the Eleusinian mysteries--music leads to flesh-eating
>which leads to religious enlightenment.
you seem to have the cart in front of the horse here-
I think rather that the religion comes first - music is only an
embellishment, or maybe a form of communication.
> Obviously, that's the short
>version, but it will do. I am completely and totally curious about what
>makes music work, what effect music has, what it all means and so
>forth.
Well there is quite a bit above - do you mean how it works
psychologically? If you talk about "music" you would have a wide range
of meanings and uses - from Muzak in lifts to TV jingles. Its the term
"experimental music" which i would say removes these two examples. The
question is what is the focus of the experiment? Experimental music is
(perhaps) an experiment with what music is...
>
>> I think i would want to distinguish here between "experimental Devices"
>> and an experimental attitude or purpose with regard to music itself -
>> formalism if you like, where entertainment is only a by-product.
>
>Okay. Formalism it is, then. In which case, I would definitely call
>Steve Reich experimental. I'm talking about the early music: "Come
>Out", "Violin Phase", "It's Gonna Rain", "Four Organs". In fact he's
>not all that different from Ligeti in many ways. Compare Ligeti's
>"Volumina" with Reich's "Four Organs" and you may be surprised how
>similar they are in inquiry. The fact that Reich is largely tonal
>doesn't make him less of an experimenter. Beethoven's Grosse Fugue is
>tonal, after all. So is Gesualdo, and even Varese at most times.
The early Reich work certainly could be thought of as experimental, so
what happened latter with the likes of the cave?
>
>It's an interesting question, though. What separates experimental
>devices from an experimental attitude exactly? Reich's phasing music
>was the product of an accident, as so many "experimental" foundations
>are:
accident - within the context of what he was working with - tape loops -
to explore sound.
>Kandinsky's abstract paintings, the Prince of Serendip and his
>discovery of radiation, Pasteur, Archimedes--on and on. Sometimes such
>accidents become the basis for an entire lifetime of inquiry that is no
>longer "innovative" but rather bent on refinement. Cezanne, for
>instance. Do you mean that an experimental attitude must constantly
>strive for "innovation"? I'm curious.
That is i think a mistake made by those who try to "copy" the programme
of experimentalism- because the results are new - they reverse the
process - anything new is experimental. Of course that's a mistake, as
is anything shocking is ... Experiments can and do produce new musics
and sometimes is shocking - sometimes its very boring - these are
besides the point.
>
>> I would say no - in that there is a difference in and between Hawking
>> and Blake - and more empirical experiment and theory. The picture of
>> Newton by Blake should bring out this difference if you know it. The
>> dark Satanic Mills - are mechanistic thought after all... not to say its
>> not impossible to gain enlightenment from any source - a dung heap or a
>> Bill Haley song...
>
>I know that painting very well indeed. Blake hated Newton, Voltaire,
>Rousseau--the cosmic mockers, as he referred to them. Yet I'd have to
>say that each of those men received enlightenment in ways that Blake
>himself never imagined. Newton discovering gravity, Voltaire losing all
>his ideals about "perfectability" after the Lisbon earthquake, and
>Rousseau building a career of social engineering on the fact that he
>was accused of stealing a pen as a child. To each his own sort of
>enlightenment, I think. Enlightenment comes from numerous sources, and
>doesn't always involve the holy choir singing. Doubtless someone has
>had a life-altering epiphany watching "Man About The House." I am not
>that one, but surely one exists.
invented a theory of gravity..
>
>> There is something different in or between experiment and experience -
>> unless one takes everything as an experiment that is perceived. But i
>> cant see how this relates to the idea of proof - associated with
>> experiment. I'm not sure i'd see Reich as experimental - well if so only
>> minimally, i'd be interested in your thoughts on Cage and Stockhausen..
>
>I'm not a big fan of Cage. I consider him a rather dull jester most of
>the time. I'm particularly numbed to boredom by his 4' 33", Number
>pieces, and--well, most of his famous work, actually. I'm sure it's a
>flaw in me, but I find my Western musicians posturing about Zen and
>Eastern philosophy to be complete rubbish, and Cage is typical.
>Stockhausen I adore, on the other hand. I'm very partial to his recent
>Helicopter Quartet with the Arditti folks, but Gesang des Junglinges is
>surely one of the great works of electronic music, and Kontakte and
>Spiral are equally striking, I think.
Ok - i think that Cage should be considered as significant, 4' 33"
amongst others certainly is experimental - as his use of randomness... i
must admit i think Stockhausen cant really be considered any more as
experimental - or what could be..
>
>> That's a highly contentious statement. For the means of delivery of the
>> bomb maybe irrelevant to its effects - you are it seems saying we
>> needn't bother with musical form - well what else is there peculiar to
>> music. FED Express or UPS ?
>
>I'm saying nothing of the sort. I'm saying pure form in and of itself
>means nothing.
well putting aside that it might - why should music have to mean
something.
>I. A. Richards did a wonderful destroy job on this sort
>of belief in modern poetry, just as George Bernard Shaw did a wonderful
>destroy job on this idea in music. Form is means. If there is one thing
>on which I agree with John Cage, it is that form is highly overrated,
>hence his dabblings in "conceptual" music. I think ideas are important.
>I know this is an archaic viewpoint in these days of oh-so-hip and
>verrry Frennnnsh intellectual bombast, but I hold to it. The "form" for
>instance of Earle Brown's "December 1952" is--well, what is it?
>Scribbles on paper. Cute linear convergences. Squares. Rectangles.
>Completely subjective to the performers. No two performances sound the
>same. So where's the "form"? Where's the form of improvised music?
>Where's the form of John Zorn's "Cobra"? Obviously these musics are
>conceived and executed. One could transcribe them note for note and
>miss the very point of the music. It's not about the "notes" or the
>formal array, but about something else.
What else? I'd say the conceptualism of cage was formal- though not
perhaps "musical". Do say Zorn is "communicating" - communicating what?
>
>> Then lets see them saying so? Thats what i find strange? No one here
>> wants to talk about the nature of what they are trying to deliver - or
>> the nature of the delivery system - if the two differ... what seems to
>> go on it a certain type of noise - and its promotion. A marketing of a
>> commodity...
>
>Well, I like noise, certainly.
"A certain type of noise" But noise itself - has become a genre. Its
certainly no longer "experimental" - or shocking. But i kind of like it
- but then noise is certainly a formalism - or is it some nihilistic
gesture, political statement... ?
> But I gather your point is that there is
>not much discussion of *music* itself on the NG. This is sad, but I
>happen to find it true as well. I've heard a fair amount of
>experimental music, and I've heard a fair amount of music from people
>on this very newsgroup--Paul Lansky, for instance, often checks in. I
>have also found that even people whose music I adore (like Lansky's) do
>not talk much about music or technique or anything else here.
So how do you know what you have heard is experimental. Mr Lansky's
only posts i could find were two promoting a release of his, though with
no explanation as to what this is about. Are we to assume the disk will
contain the necessary information - or that those who consider
themselves experimentalists either do not discuss here - but elsewhere
(if so why?) or do not discuss at all. This strikes me as being very
odd.
>
>I won't bemoan the point. I will simply add what I can to the
>newsgroup, as I am doing now.
The point is that those who post - promoting their work - fail to say
what its about? Do they know - is it about experiment - if so what?
>
>> Only other musicians - well and others interested - but this is a
>> newsgroup where - if such thoughts are relevant- they should be
>> discussed - they are not it seems. And you say you will not carry on...
>> and no one else is also - it seems. If someone was interested in
>> Experimental Music - in what its concerns are - its history - its point
>> - then this newsgroup would not be a suitable place for finding out -
>> would it? We see no discussion about this - but a continual drip of
>> self-promotional posts - of what is not experimental music at all! Well
>> if it is it would be nice to know how and why?
>
>Agreed. What makes The Red Masque's music experimental? Of course, the
>glib answer is that it is because they call it that, but the underlying
>question is "what is the experiment?" and I have no answer for that.
>Sometimes I can figure it out, other times not. It doesn't stop me from
>liking them, though.
But that's not much use in a discussion group. Though i may not hold the
view myself its almost as if there just wasn't any such thing as
experimental music anymore at all. If just calling it experimental is
sufficient - all music is then possibly experimental. OK we arrive at
then the only criteria left - you like it (its only rock and roll but i
like it...)
>
>> The audience seems to be non existent in the main - or at least not much
>> bothered. I do like the phrase "controlled randomness" it seems to
>> explain why - why lots of things are now - well controlled to the point
>> of non-existence. (As opposed to be so experimental as to remain silent)
>
>Again, going back to bogus Eastern philosophy, I think. It's so Zen
>just to sit and listen to nature. Silence is music. Blah, blah, blah.
>More leftovers from Cage, McPhee, Riley...oh well. I'm sure it has its
>place.
Cage's work marks a point in particular - of not being about any
aesthetic. Or do i find this bogus. Are we just left with a improv (a
joke) jazzy aesthetic? Or some feedback - which may masquerade as a
political statement.
>
>Part of the problem also is the typical and trite postmodernist
>posture: "It's all been done, so there's no ground to break, and
>besides, there's enough material out there for us to rip off so why
>create anything? There are no artists, no authors, it's just culture,
>and so every idea is mine as much as it is someone else's."
But i don't see this anywhere here? True or not - its not even
expressed.
>This is
>just the sort of attitude in academia that makes me begin to cough and
>vomit blood, but it's seeped down into the other strata of society.
Or - its an accurate comment on what actually is the case.
>Fraudulent ideas tend not to like too much analysis, so that may
>explain why most "experimental" people are silent about their work, at
>least in part.
So its all a fraud. I'd disagree here as i cant even see the guile being
used to defend whatever activity is being done.
>
>So, Mr. Whitehead--what do you propose?
>
I'm not sure - as i say either there is nothing (re experimental music)
to say (anymore) or its being said somewhere else by other people.
--
James Whitehead
Om shanti
<jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> you seem to have the cart in front of the horse here-
> I think rather that the religion comes first - music is only an
> embellishment, or maybe a form of communication.
Hmm...I tend to disagree. I know it's one of the prevailing theories of
musicology these days that music proceeds from primal war cries. I'm
unconvinced of this, though it would certainly confirm your hypothesis.
However, as surely as there was *always* sound, music seems to me to
precede even the need for war. (But I'm an optimist.) I cannot picture
a silent religion--maybe I'm wrong. I think the first sound a human
being ever made probably occured when one australopithecine tripped his
buddy and laughed. This was surely as musical and more enjoyable than
even religion could have been.
Religion to me seems overall an organizing activity, particularly
socially. And surely organizations occur after the inventions. Not that
I'm knocking religion--I'll do that another time.
> >I am completely and totally curious about what
> >makes music work, what effect music has, what it all means and so
> >forth.
>
> Well there is quite a bit above - do you mean how it works
> psychologically? If you talk about "music" you would have a wide range
> of meanings and uses - from Muzak in lifts to TV jingles. Its the term
> "experimental music" which i would say removes these two examples. The
> question is what is the focus of the experiment? Experimental music is
> (perhaps) an experiment with what music is...
This seems fair. And I am, by the way, curious about Muzak and TV
jingles as well. How anyone can be bothered to fill their heads with
Coca-Cola's version of music fascinates me to no end. But as we're
talking about experimental music in particularly, I'll keep the
concentration there.
Can it be a focus of experimental music to experiment with the
audience? Can it be experimental to realize a work so completely bland
and innocuous that it is impossible to recall? Need experimental music
always push formal boundaries, or is it equally possibly to create
experimental music completely within genre boundaries, yet subvert the
genre simultaneously? My answer, of course, to all these questions is
"Yes," but this is heresy in most circles.
I tend to think that any experiment can be valid. Why some are called
"experimental" and others are not seems to me always problematic,
involving general politicking and semantic wrangles, both of which I
dislike, so I normally avoid such conversations. Which leads me to
Reich:
> The early Reich work certainly could be thought of as experimental, so
> what happened latter with the likes of the cave?
I *love* The Cave.
Why is it not experimental? I don't know. Someone said it wasn't. I'd
opine that it *does* in fact qualify as experimental on several points.
It was most certainly an experiment with the "form" of opera, in
searching for an appropriate form for a contemporary opera. I'd say
it's far more successful to my ear than Glass's 4 hour piece of crap,
or any of John Adams's doings in the same area, which seem to me to
echo the very cliches of operatic production (though of course this is
for parody). It is also an experiment with human voice mimesis based on
mechanical models: the typewriter, the video camera, etc. which
determine the rhythms of the piece. It also toys with the use of
amplification in an operatic form.
Now, if your definition of experiment is that experiment in music must
necessarily redefine constantly the forms and language of music, well
of course Reich's opera doesn't qualify. But then, neither would many
things. Stockhausen. Harry Partch. Schoenberg. Varese. John Coltrane.
Ravi Shankar. Alvin Curran. Charlie Parker. Cecil Taylor.
And yet, these people to me are quite experimental. Parker developed a
completely new language for improvisation in music, for instance,
though no one seems to notice the fact. Shankar as well. Partch brought
manufactured sound back into music, I think, far better than Cage ever
did, and so on.
I think the actual enemy of experiment in music is steadfast and
inflexible definition. Inquiry of any sort should never restrict itself
only to certain acceptable areas. Otherwise, what makes it valuable?
For instance, there is, in my experience of universities and music
writers, a notable bias. "Experimental music" must be a development of
Western orchestral/choral tradition, or it isn't worth consideration.
Virtually every book I've picked up in my fairly short life that talks
about "experimental" music states this by omission. This sort of
snobbery always appalled me, and still does. What gives Western
"classical" music some sort of hegemony to define what is acceptable
for experiment, and what tools must be used? I'd say even further that
it is precisely this sort of stringency that stifles experiments.
I remember Cecil Taylor saying something pointed about "avant-garde"
music. He said, "The problem with being 'avant-garde' is that those
guys always depend on what's already been done, because they feel some
need to stay 'ahead' always, when they could just be working." I feel
the same way about self-proclaimed experimenters.
Having been a scientist once, I'd have to say there is not much value
in isolated experiments. In fact, the purpose of experiments is to make
something novel but reproducible. This sort of aesthetic is probably
anathema to you, but I think it has its place. It is perfectly valid
for a music to carve out his own particular use of music and to stay
then with it for his lifetime. This may take him out of the range of
"experimentalism" but then, why always quest for novelty?
I'd say a good portion of the experimental music I've heard from this
newsgroup was experimental within clearly defined genre. I find nothing
wrong with this necessarily, though of course it's easy to carp and ask
"What's the experiment, then? Don't they know this experiment has been
done?" Still, what says an experiment can be done only once?
> What else? I'd say the conceptualism of cage was formal- though not
> perhaps "musical". Do say Zorn is "communicating" - communicating what?
I'd say Cage would find that statement amusing. He spent much of his
life trying to destroy "form." Down with form, up with idea--this is
the essence of all conceptual art. On the subject of John Zorn, I'd say
that Cobra is an experiment in what can be done with the idea of a
"score," so precious to classical musicians. Can a score contain
improvisation (Bach's did)? Can improvisation be written without notes
(Earle Brown's are)? Can a score be stripped down to its original
reason for being--namely, to tell the musicians what to do? Et cetera.
What does this communicate? I leave that up to you.
> The point is that those who post - promoting their work - fail to say
> what its about? Do they know - is it about experiment - if so what?
An excellent point. I would say they probably think that listeners can
determine that for themselves (though my experience is that listeners
determine fairly little for themselves beyond like/dislike and
emotional reactions). You'll probably hear that mantra so familiar and
so frustrating,"music speaks for itself," in response. I don't think it
does, but then, it isn't my music, so what do I know? I'm charitable,
and so I'll have to say I take it for granted that every musician knows
what his/her music is about, and certainly what his/her experiment is.
Should it always be made explicit? I don't know. Sometimes I think it
would be very helpful indeed. Other times I have bad flashbacks to
1970s era liner notes from "classical" albums, which I hope never to
read again. "My work is an extrapolation of tone rows carried into the
arena of religion, a type of post-Boulez serialism in which the notes
are treated discretely as spiritual entities, each with its own
coloration and hegemony, which invokes planetary movements and emotions
associated with astrological readings of semiotic theory, as referenced
by Baudrillard in his discussions about 'Bonanza'..." and so forth.
> Cage's work marks a point in particular - of not being about any
> aesthetic. Or do i find this bogus. Are we just left with a improv (a
> joke) jazzy aesthetic? Or some feedback - which may masquerade as a
> political statement.
I'd go further than that. Nihilism is the rule of the day, and a hip
nihilism is the sine qua non of contemporary musicians. There is no
aesthetic: aesthetics are passé. There is only the realm of action:
what I do, what I say, what I make, what I define. Solipsism in
miniature. Of course this is its own political statement. I find it
pitiful, but there you are. Cage's work, I opine, has been the single
worst influence on modern music in this very, because it is infinitely
reproducible in dismal fashion, essentially anti-intellectual and
anti-intellect, and utterly vacuous of commitment--aesthetic, political
or otherwise. Cage of course was a cosmic jester in this way: whatever
his flaws (and to me they are numerous), he was un-self-conscious, and
always humorous. His experiments in the hands of people
all-too-self-conscious and humorless have become quite painful--the
very sort of thing that makes me hate music. Which is why I make the
following statement.:
> >Part of the problem also is the typical and trite postmodernist
> >posture: "It's all been done, so there's no ground to break, and
> >besides, there's enough material out there for us to rip off so why
> >create anything? There are no artists, no authors, it's just culture,
> >and so every idea is mine as much as it is someone else's."
You say you don't see this expressed, but then that is the very point.
It is latent and implicit virtually every single artist's work these
days, at least those who claim "post-modernist" credentials (and there
are many).
I despise any idea that is an essential dead-end to conversation. Once
one honestly believes "there is nothing more to say," then that's that.
End of the line. No cheap day return. Once one honestly believes "there
is no such thing as a language" or various other Derridisms, that
spells death for any discussion--after all, how would you be able to
discuss, if not in language?
Such dead-end ideas as this have moved from academics into the realm of
artistic creation, though I wonder why anyone ever takes them
seriously. But as the man said, "Some ideas are so stupid only an
educated man could believe them." If all that's left is game-playing,
then the question is whether or not the games are interesting. Po-mo
drivel does not interest me.
It does, however, give "experimental" artists a shield for their
fragile sensibilities. One can always hide behind abstractions, but
this particular set of abstractions that form the basis of
post-structuralism are the best bivouac there is for someone who has
nothing really to say and no interest in communicating anything.
> >This is
> >just the sort of attitude in academia that makes me begin to cough and
> >vomit blood, but it's seeped down into the other strata of society.
>
> Or - its an accurate comment on what actually is the case.
Even if it were accurate (I don't think it is), why bother with it?
Just say you thought up everything, because the culture told you to,
therefore there is no need for you to make anything viable to anyone
else.
> >Fraudulent ideas tend not to like too much analysis, so that may
> >explain why most "experimental" people are silent about their work, at
> >least in part.
>
> So its all a fraud. I'd disagree here as i cant even see the guile being
> used to defend whatever activity is being done.
I have seen it. This newsgroup is relatively free of it, as it is
largely not academic (thank goodness). I could point out that if it is
one's core belief that nothing one does needs any defense (and this is
also central to sophomoric po-mo), no one else would ever seen the
canard in action.
> >So, Mr. Whitehead--what do you propose?
> >
> I'm not sure - as i say either there is nothing (re experimental music)
> to say (anymore) or its being said somewhere else by other people.
Well, in my travails, I have observed that there is in fact plenty to
say. There is about a 40% chance of the next sentence out of my mouth
or my hands never having been said before. If I string together 100
sentences, the odds of my essay ever having been written before is
astronomically large. People always miss obvious things like this when
seeking justifications for their not doing anything.
At any rate, whether or not "it" be said by others elsewhere than here
proves irrelevant. If it is, then you may certainly endeavor to find it
(in my 16 years or so on BBS and the Internet at large, I haven't found
it on any newsgroup); if it isn't, you remain at square one. Either
way, neither result would affect the current environment. The only way
to do that is--well, to carry on conversations very much like this one
within that environment. The likelihood of having such conversations
only decreases if no one sets a precedent. Without such examples,
newcomers to the group, upon casual survey of topics, threads and posts
will come to the conclusion even more readily that this is a place
where people come to promote themselves *and nothing more*.
I'd hate to give that impression. There are music lovers in the world.
I am one, therefore there are at least that many. To draw them all
together requires a distinct combination of fortune, luck,
happenstance, endeavor, endurance, and persistence. I haven't much
fortune or luck, but I supply the other qualities when necessary.
Omar
rzzaj
For those who DO experiment with music... try THIS....
Put the words of this post to music!
Zzaj
"Om shanti" <bc...@scnnospam.org> wrote in message
news:080120030037059210%bc...@scnnospam.org...
Alex Temple
>
> Beethoven's Grosse Fugue is
> tonal, after all. So is Gesualdo, and even Varese at most times.
>
is "Octandre," but I've never heard anything by him that seemed tonal
except in the very loose sense of "pitch-centric."
> I'm not a big fan of Cage. I consider him a rather dull jester
> most of the time.
Have you heard his earlier stuff -- the Sonatas and Interludes for
Prepared Piano and especially Credo in Us?
> I'm sure it's a
> flaw in me, but I find my Western musicians posturing about Zen
> and
> Eastern philosophy to be complete rubbish, and Cage is typical.
> Stockhausen I adore, on the other hand.
Yeah, he postured about AZTEC philosophy so he must be OK!!! ;)
James Whitehead
<bc...@scnnospam.org> writes
>In article <4w4ZaEAS...@jliat.demon.co.uk>, James Whitehead
><jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> you seem to have the cart in front of the horse here-
>> I think rather that the religion comes first - music is only an
>> embellishment, or maybe a form of communication.
>
>Hmm...I tend to disagree. I know it's one of the prevailing theories of
>musicology these days that music proceeds from primal war cries.
Such cries as when one hits ones thumb with a hammer - or shouts boo! to
a young child ... but they are in a way proto-music - perhaps the boo!
is more "musical" - i'd guess that early humans as well as drawing the
animals they saw and hunted would mimic their sounds. And perhaps
percussion sounds and reeds - you know - placing a blade of grass
between the thumbs and blowing. War is something i would more associate
with the development of civilization- agrarian cultures have time in the
early summer for war- you know the song from the 60s - well from the OT
- a time to reap a time to die ... blah ... (ironic we now think war is
un-civilized!)
Another source would i guess would be using hollow bones... strange
early mans music reeds and percussion - seems we come full circle with
Jazz?
Some of the most *simple* music i've heard is the Inuit lullaby's
> I'm
>unconvinced of this, though it would certainly confirm your hypothesis.
>However, as surely as there was *always* sound, music seems to me to
>precede even the need for war.
i would agree for reasons above... i'd say music began without reason
... by humans simply mucking about..
>(But I'm an optimist.) I cannot picture
>a silent religion-
oh i can - quite a few religions use silence - all too often we fail to
appreciate the qualities of silence- and vows of silence and withdrawal
from the noise of life are also common. All music is on one level is a
disturbance of this silence. Like the groove in the record without
silence we couldn't have any music. What interests me as coming to music
from elsewhere is its preoccupation - its glib acceptance of its medium
of air at a certain temperature and pressure. I've wondered what an
orchestra would sound like on Everest or in death valley. And if
"musicians" cant imagine music outside of our atmosphere - seems a very
small theatre in the cosmos. Has anyone used musical instruments which
cause electromagnetic vibrations - and so need a radio receiver to
detect them? Bat music? - maybe i'm giving away some interesting ideas -
or maybe just rambling. But rather than a radio station first start with
audio - and modulate it to radio frequencies - why not just muck about
with the radio frequencies?
>-maybe I'm wrong. I think the first sound a human
>being ever made probably occured when one australopithecine tripped his
>buddy and laughed. This was surely as musical and more enjoyable than
>even religion could have been.
There is a larson cartoon - "Drawn by the pulsating sound of a rock
thumping on a dead armadillo, two Australopithecine's stood at the
forest edge. Instantly, Thog's agent knew they had a crossover hit."
>
>Religion to me seems overall an organizing activity, particularly
>socially. And surely organizations occur after the inventions. Not that
>I'm knocking religion--I'll do that another time.
Religions can and were very primitive - its dangerous to compare
organised religion - like a Saxophone with a blade of grass.
>
>> >I am completely and totally curious about what
>> >makes music work, what effect music has, what it all means and so
>> >forth.
>>
>> Well there is quite a bit above - do you mean how it works
>> psychologically? If you talk about "music" you would have a wide range
>> of meanings and uses - from Muzak in lifts to TV jingles. Its the term
>> "experimental music" which i would say removes these two examples. The
>> question is what is the focus of the experiment? Experimental music is
>> (perhaps) an experiment with what music is...
>
>This seems fair. And I am, by the way, curious about Muzak and TV
>jingles as well. How anyone can be bothered to fill their heads with
>Coca-Cola's version of music fascinates me to no end. But as we're
>talking about experimental music in particularly, I'll keep the
>concentration there.
I think its like a catatonic swaying - but in the head.
>
>Can it be a focus of experimental music to experiment with the
>audience? Can it be experimental to realize a work so completely bland
>and innocuous that it is impossible to recall? Need experimental music
>always push formal boundaries, or is it equally possibly to create
>experimental music completely within genre boundaries, yet subvert the
>genre simultaneously? My answer, of course, to all these questions is
>"Yes," but this is heresy in most circles.
I'd answer yes also - but with a proviso or two - once an experiment is
made - why endlessly repeat it - other than by way of demonstration. And
i'm not sure of "genre" boundary - if experimental music is associated
with the novel - then it must always be on the edge. Of course the
problem with that isn't "its all been done" - as that's the natural
conclusion in being on the edge - but its hard work. The wheel now seems
obvious! What makes me suspicious of those working within the genre
they wish to subvert is its never barber shop singing or recorder
playing...
>
>I tend to think that any experiment can be valid. Why some are called
>"experimental" and others are not seems to me always problematic,
>involving general politicking and semantic wrangles, both of which I
>dislike, so I normally avoid such conversations.
But we are in rec.music.experimental
>Which leads me to
>Reich:
>
>> The early Reich work certainly could be thought of as experimental, so
>> what happened latter with the likes of the cave?
>
>I *love* The Cave.
I must admit i find it dull.
>
>Why is it not experimental? I don't know.
Because its opera.
>Someone said it wasn't. I'd
>opine that it *does* in fact qualify as experimental on several points.
>It was most certainly an experiment with the "form" of opera,
and i hadn't read that when i wrote the above... Do you like Nixon in
China - ?
>in
>searching for an appropriate form for a contemporary opera. I'd say
>it's far more successful to my ear than Glass's 4 hour piece of crap,
>or any of John Adams's doings in the same area, which seem to me to
>echo the very cliches of operatic production (though of course this is
>for parody). It is also an experiment with human voice mimesis based on
>mechanical models: the typewriter, the video camera, etc. which
>determine the rhythms of the piece. It also toys with the use of
>amplification in an operatic form.
Yes - but represents a retreat from abstraction - of experimentalism -
back to opera - story telling - Peter and the Wolf. Gilbert and Sullivan
- who no doubt were very smart...
>
>Now, if your definition of experiment is that experiment in music must
>necessarily redefine constantly the forms and language of music, well
>of course Reich's opera doesn't qualify. But then, neither would many
>things. Stockhausen. Harry Partch. Schoenberg. Varese. John Coltrane.
>Ravi Shankar. Alvin Curran. Charlie Parker. Cecil Taylor.
I'd take issue with some of the list. But the alternative is to say - it
seems any and everything can be considered experimental - then you've no
definition at all, what this discussion group should be about is arguing
the distinction- (bit didactic of me!) and not a sales board - or like
dislike listing.
>
>And yet, these people to me are quite experimental. Parker developed a
>completely new language for improvisation in music, for instance,
>though no one seems to notice the fact. Shankar as well. Partch brought
>manufactured sound back into music, I think, far better than Cage ever
>did, and so on.
No - not 'and so on' - "far better" is besides the point. What makes
experimentalism difficult is not technique - but concept - i would
maintain. And of course this is to be found throughout the history of
music, but with experimentalism is recognised as a particular issue -
that previous ideas about melody - context etc. are not relevant.
>
>I think the actual enemy of experiment in music is steadfast and
>inflexible definition.
agreed - but as noted above - a definition is needed - isn't finding the
definition what experimental music is all about.
> Inquiry of any sort should never restrict itself
>only to certain acceptable areas. Otherwise, what makes it valuable?
But that's what experimental music has become - acceptable areas - to
say you are going to challenge "experimentalism" by staying in the genre
- has been done - to keep doing it again seems strange.
>
>For instance, there is, in my experience of universities and music
>writers, a notable bias. "Experimental music" must be a development of
>Western orchestral/choral tradition, or it isn't worth consideration.
>Virtually every book I've picked up in my fairly short life that talks
>about "experimental" music states this by omission. This sort of
>snobbery always appalled me, and still does. What gives Western
>"classical" music some sort of hegemony to define what is acceptable
>for experiment, and what tools must be used? I'd say even further that
>it is precisely this sort of stringency that stifles experiments.
Well to an extent but we do get with the beginnings and through the 20th
century a strong external influence - begging with debussy? amongst
others.
>
>I remember Cecil Taylor saying something pointed about "avant-garde"
>music. He said, "The problem with being 'avant-garde' is that those
>guys always depend on what's already been done, because they feel some
>need to stay 'ahead' always, when they could just be working." I feel
>the same way about self-proclaimed experimenters.
But "just working" within the genre isn't experimental. Looking at other
cultures *was*. Its final debasement is World Music - Afro Celtic
whatever and Latin goes to Vienna...
>
>Having been a scientist once, I'd have to say there is not much value
>in isolated experiments. In fact, the purpose of experiments is to make
>something novel but reproducible.
I thought it was to prove or disprove an idea?
>This sort of aesthetic is probably
>anathema to you, but I think it has its place. It is perfectly valid
>for a music to carve out his own particular use of music and to stay
>then with it for his lifetime. This may take him out of the range of
>"experimentalism" but then, why always quest for novelty?
I've absolutely no argument with this. Those guys who on their Yamaha
VXXX three manual electric organs who play musical show tunes in their
living rooms and will go on doing so long as the sun remains stable ....
i've nothing against them .. why the quest for novelty - why climb
mountains?
>
>I'd say a good portion of the experimental music I've heard from this
>newsgroup was experimental within clearly defined genre.
Aghhhh!
>I find nothing
>wrong with this necessarily, though of course it's easy to carp and ask
>"What's the experiment, then? Don't they know this experiment has been
>done?" Still, what says an experiment can be done only once?
Nothing - but its only use is educational in that case - which is a good
and noble thing - though you might not agree if your a laboratory rat
pinned out for some school kid to cut up. Why question the so called
experiment - why bring it into question - only in order to establish if
it truly is something new. And hey - it one day might be! But that it
seems is hard - so lets just call whatever "experimental" - even if its
Nixon in China - naked on ice.
>
>> What else? I'd say the conceptualism of cage was formal- though not
>> perhaps "musical". Do say Zorn is "communicating" - communicating what?
>
>I'd say Cage would find that statement amusing. He spent much of his
>life trying to destroy "form." Down with form, up with idea--this is
>the essence of all conceptual art.
Yep - and its very formal!
> On the subject of John Zorn, I'd say
>that Cobra is an experiment in what can be done with the idea of a
>"score," so precious to classical musicians.
I'd disagree here - by use of the "its been done before" argument.
>Can a score contain
>improvisation (Bach's did)? Can improvisation be written without notes
>(Earle Brown's are)? Can a score be stripped down to its original
>reason for being--namely, to tell the musicians what to do? Et cetera.
>What does this communicate? I leave that up to you.
It communicates these ideas regarding music. Should music involve sound?
Again this has been done - as i keep repeating just because innovation
as experiment is difficult doesn't mean its invalid.
>
>> The point is that those who post - promoting their work - fail to say
>> what its about? Do they know - is it about experiment - if so what?
>
>An excellent point. I would say they probably think that listeners can
>determine that for themselves (though my experience is that listeners
>determine fairly little for themselves beyond like/dislike and
>emotional reactions).
But that still doesn't explain why they aren't so excited by their
discovery - you'd think it would be the other case of them not wanting
to shut up about it and its consequences for what is considered music
etc.
>You'll probably hear that mantra so familiar and
>so frustrating,"music speaks for itself," in response. I don't think it
>does, but then, it isn't my music, so what do I know? I'm charitable,
>and so I'll have to say I take it for granted that every musician knows
>what his/her music is about, and certainly what his/her experiment is.
Maybe they do - maybe they don't - but what is interesting is that they
don't want to talk about it.
>Should it always be made explicit? I don't know. Sometimes I think it
>would be very helpful indeed. Other times I have bad flashbacks to
>1970s era liner notes from "classical" albums, which I hope never to
>read again. "My work is an extrapolation of tone rows carried into the
>arena of religion, a type of post-Boulez serialism in which the notes
>are treated discretely as spiritual entities, each with its own
>coloration and hegemony, which invokes planetary movements and emotions
>associated with astrological readings of semiotic theory, as referenced
>by Baudrillard in his discussions about 'Bonanza'..." and so forth.
But this is good is it not - as if that's what they think - you at least
know it is - the other approach - silence avoids this foot in mouth
nicely. What you seem to imply - almost advocate is ignorance. If noize
groups are basically copying Mertzbow (have i the correct spelling) -
and that's all - then the *silence* is ironically accounted for.
>
>> Cage's work marks a point in particular - of not being about any
>> aesthetic. Or do i find this bogus. Are we just left with a improv (a
>> joke) jazzy aesthetic? Or some feedback - which may masquerade as a
>> political statement.
>
>I'd go further than that. Nihilism is the rule of the day,
this day - its been around for at least 120 years.
> and a hip
>nihilism is the sine qua non of contemporary musicians. There is no
>aesthetic: aesthetics are passé. There is only the realm of action:
>what I do, what I say, what I make, what I define. Solipsism in
>miniature. Of course this is its own political statement. I find it
>pitiful, but there you are. Cage's work, I opine, has been the single
>worst influence on modern music in this very, because it is infinitely
>reproducible in dismal fashion, essentially anti-intellectual and
>anti-intellect, and utterly vacuous of commitment--aesthetic, political
>or otherwise. Cage of course was a cosmic jester in this way: whatever
>his flaws (and to me they are numerous), he was un-self-conscious, and
>always humorous. His experiments in the hands of people
>all-too-self-conscious and humorless have become quite painful--the
>very sort of thing that makes me hate music. Which is why I make the
>following statement.:
To repeat Cages experiments is perhaps silly - to ignore them is for
anyone interested in experimental music odd (at best) - other than he
makes experiment perhaps more difficult. He might be considered to make
it impossible. BTW - look at his scores - e.g. Fontana Mix - what is
Zorn up to re - Cobra? You see i get the feeling that the boot is now
firmly on the other foot. The avant-garde - of the 50s and 60s are now
fair game. And out from the woodwork all the G&S fans crawl to heave
abuse on the "pretentious" - Cage in Schoenberg's words was an inventor
- with a sense of humour - but also a seriousness. You cite "single
worst influence" but i don't see how you can drag ethics into the
exploration of music. And its now OK to play rag-time and say its
experimental - in a post-modernist sense. Some sort of pretension is
always present - but sometimes it remains unspoken for fear of revealing
its emptiness. The recognition of Nihilism in 2Oth C art maybe comical -
to those still singing on the end of the pier.
>
>> >Part of the problem also is the typical and trite postmodernist
>> >posture: "It's all been done, so there's no ground to break, and
>> >besides, there's enough material out there for us to rip off so why
>> >create anything? There are no artists, no authors, it's just culture,
>> >and so every idea is mine as much as it is someone else's."
>
>You say you don't see this expressed, but then that is the very point.
>It is latent and implicit virtually every single artist's work these
>days, at least those who claim "post-modernist" credentials (and there
>are many).
Post-modernist credentials again can be abused. Post-modernism is in a
way a recognition of the likes of Cage. You may regard this as bad? Why
- because it critiques the sort of music *you like* ? Like it or not we
have to work in a nihilistic post-modern world, or do we start writing
Masses? for baroque organ - AKA Tavener... Part et al.
>
>I despise any idea that is an essential dead-end to conversation. Once
>one honestly believes "there is nothing more to say," then that's that.
>End of the line. No cheap day return. Once one honestly believes "there
>is no such thing as a language" or various other Derridisms, that
>spells death for any discussion--after all, how would you be able to
>discuss, if not in language?
Well you do as much credit - well more or is it less to Derrida than you
do Cage. The Oxford Dons - think he was probably the worst thing for
philosophy... sure i think Cage and Derrida give us problems - that's
part of the game - to overcome these - not ignore them - that's what you
seem to wish, and that's what we find here? What spells the death of
discussion is the accepted 'genre' or truth of the matter. If we take
Derrida as an example - he has more than any of the Dons created
discussion, opened up language and ideas of what ideas are...
>
>Such dead-end ideas as this have moved from academics into the realm of
>artistic creation, though I wonder why anyone ever takes them
>seriously. But as the man said, "Some ideas are so stupid only an
>educated man could believe them." If all that's left is game-playing,
>then the question is whether or not the games are interesting. Po-mo
>drivel does not interest me.
Which is a pity as its the world you live in. Would we be back in the
Victorian era where music was a good tune - is that what you are saying?
These dangerous ideas have been around throughout the last century,
post-modernism is their consequence - and in somecases avoidance by
naivety and resort to kitsch popularism part of this.
>
>It does, however, give "experimental" artists a shield for their
>fragile sensibilities. One can always hide behind abstractions, but
>this particular set of abstractions that form the basis of
>post-structuralism are the best bivouac there is for someone who has
>nothing really to say and no interest in communicating anything.
But they - speak volumes - that you think its rubbish puts you firmly in
the audience booing and jeering a Schoenberg or Cage concert, yet its
their work who made Zorn's Cobra acceptable - it (cobra) arrives
completely unchangingly recognisable as music. Nowhere do i see a
general consensus of approval for post-modern art any more than modern
art had, what's needed is an engagement with it - not a rejection of it.
>
>> >This is
>> >just the sort of attitude in academia that makes me begin to cough and
>> >vomit blood, but it's seeped down into the other strata of society.
>>
>> Or - its an accurate comment on what actually is the case.
>
>Even if it were accurate (I don't think it is), why bother with it?
>Just say you thought up everything, because the culture told you to,
>therefore there is no need for you to make anything viable to anyone
>else.
I don't quite follow the above - but we have the kind of problem -
though different now with that of 100 years ago when it was announced
God was Dead - (tough on Mahler - and cries of Oh no he's not from the
end of the pier) but something with which the arts had to engage - the
experimental avant garde that is - Gods - like father Christmases or
Marx's death maybe hard to take for the ancient regime- but it can be a
cruel world - and art isn't necessarily an opiate.
>
>> >Fraudulent ideas tend not to like too much analysis, so that may
>> >explain why most "experimental" people are silent about their work, at
>> >least in part.
>>
>> So its all a fraud. I'd disagree here as i cant even see the guile being
>> used to defend whatever activity is being done.
>
>I have seen it. This newsgroup is relatively free of it, as it is
>largely not academic (thank goodness). I could point out that if it is
>one's core belief that nothing one does needs any defense (and this is
>also central to sophomoric po-mo), no one else would ever seen the
>canard in action.
Anti-academic popularism is also po-mo - don't you know. Zorn can only
exist in the glow of ironic po-mo parody and anti-colonialism -
(discuss... :-)
>
>> >So, Mr. Whitehead--what do you propose?
>> >
>> I'm not sure - as i say either there is nothing (re experimental music)
>> to say (anymore) or its being said somewhere else by other people.
>
>Well, in my travails, I have observed that there is in fact plenty to
>say. There is about a 40% chance of the next sentence out of my mouth
>or my hands never having been said before. If I string together 100
>sentences, the odds of my essay ever having been written before is
>astronomically large. People always miss obvious things like this when
>seeking justifications for their not doing anything.
>
>At any rate, whether or not "it" be said by others elsewhere than here
>proves irrelevant. If it is, then you may certainly endeavor to find it
>(in my 16 years or so on BBS and the Internet at large, I haven't found
>it on any newsgroup); if it isn't, you remain at square one. Either
>way, neither result would affect the current environment. The only way
>to do that is--well, to carry on conversations very much like this one
>within that environment. The likelihood of having such conversations
>only decreases if no one sets a precedent. Without such examples,
>newcomers to the group, upon casual survey of topics, threads and posts
>will come to the conclusion even more readily that this is a place
>where people come to promote themselves *and nothing more*.
agreed!
>
>I'd hate to give that impression. There are music lovers in the world.
>I am one, therefore there are at least that many. To draw them all
>together requires a distinct combination of fortune, luck,
>happenstance, endeavor, endurance, and persistence. I haven't much
>fortune or luck, but I supply the other qualities when necessary.
>
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
writes
>OK, gentz'/la-deez',
>
>For those who DO experiment with music... try THIS....
>
>Put the words of this post to music!
>
========== #1 ==============
1. plug modem into recorder
2. press record
3. Release as limited edition vinyl.
The end.
========== # 2 ==============
Substitute it for the oratorio for any opera of
Mozart -
=========== # 3 ==============
As #2 but a tune taken at random from Oklahoma!
========== # 4 ===============
The piece - post/reply is already experimental music in that it
challenges and explores the boundaries of experimental music.
===============================
--
James Whitehead
Alex Temple
Q. How many Zen masters does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: A tree in a golden forest.
Q. How many Zen masters does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Two. One to change it and one not to change it.
Q. How many Zen masters does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. Four. One to change it.
Om shanti
<fiber_optiqWANTSspa...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> What Varèse pieces are tonal? The only one I've analyzed in any depth
> is "Octandre," but I've never heard anything by him that seemed tonal
> except in the very loose sense of "pitch-centric."
They are definitely pitch-centered pieces, as far removed from German
"atonality" (or pantonality, if you believe Schoenberg) as Charles
Ives. Ecuatorial is largely tonal, as is Ameriques, and sizable
portions of Integrales.
> > I'm not a big fan of Cage. I consider him a rather dull jester
> > most of the time.
>
> Have you heard his earlier stuff -- the Sonatas and Interludes for
> Prepared Piano and especially Credo in Us?
Yes, I have. I like his work up to, oh, about Imaginary Landscape. The
Sonatas are genuinely interesting to me. His text pieces, number
pieces, and such bore me to tears, almost without exception. And surely
his string quartet is one of the dullest things I've ever heard, even
worse than listening to Nixon's "Checkers" speech. My idea about Cage:
Never has so much nothing been said about so little something.
> > I'm sure it's a
> > flaw in me, but I find my Western musicians posturing about Zen
> > and
> > Eastern philosophy to be complete rubbish, and Cage is typical.
> > Stockhausen I adore, on the other hand.
>
> Yeah, he postured about AZTEC philosophy so he must be OK!!! ;)
Hey, at least it's in my hemisphere. ;)
om shanti
Om shanti
> OK, gentz'/la-deez',
>
> For those who DO experiment with music... try THIS....
>
> Put the words of this post to music!
Preferably using only percussion instruments and a wave modulator ;)
om shanti
Om shanti
<jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >Can it be a focus of experimental music to experiment with the
> >audience? Can it be experimental to realize a work so completely bland
> >and innocuous that it is impossible to recall? Need experimental music
> >always push formal boundaries, or is it equally possibly to create
> >experimental music completely within genre boundaries, yet subvert the
> >genre simultaneously? My answer, of course, to all these questions is
> >"Yes," but this is heresy in most circles.
>
> I'd answer yes also - but with a proviso or two - once an experiment is
> made - why endlessly repeat it - other than by way of demonstration. And
> i'm not sure of "genre" boundary - if experimental music is associated
> with the novel - then it must always be on the edge. Of course the
> problem with that isn't "its all been done" - as that's the natural
> conclusion in being on the edge - but its hard work. The wheel now seems
> obvious! What makes me suspicious of those working within the genre
> they wish to subvert is its never barber shop singing or recorder
> playing...
Actually, funny you should say this...I know of at least four instances
of experimental recorder playing, and at least one avant-garde
barbershop piece.
Apropos, I'd say that experimental music needn't always be associated
with the novel. One can experiment with anything. That's the beauty of
experiment to me. This in no way, of course, means that the experiment
will be 1) successful; 2) comprehensible; 3) reproducible; 4) worthy.
> >Why is it not experimental? I don't know.
>
> Because its opera.
Well, that's a little cheap, I'd say. So is Die Soldaten, and so is
Eight Songs for a Mad King. Doesn't the world of opera need also to be
redefined and rejuvenated at least as much as jazz or Western classical
music? More, I'd say.
> and i hadn't read that when i wrote the above... Do you like Nixon in
> China - ?
I hate Nixon in China. But I do like the image of Mao Zedong breaking
into an aria, so it's not completely without merit. The Chairman Dances
summarizes the whole opera neatly, and to me is more interesting.
> Yes - but represents a retreat from abstraction - of experimentalism -
> back to opera - story telling - Peter and the Wolf. Gilbert and Sullivan
> - who no doubt were very smart...
Ahhh...now here's an issue. Need "Experiment" always tend toward
further abstraction?
> I'd take issue with some of the list. But the alternative is to say - it
> seems any and everything can be considered experimental - then you've no
> definition at all, what this discussion group should be about is arguing
> the distinction- (bit didactic of me!) and not a sales board - or like
> dislike listing.
Well, I think you're smart enough to know the difference between kinds
of definition. I'm not interested in prescriptive grammar (not even of
music). I am all in favor of prototype definitions, rather than
structural ones, precisely because it *does* allow for experiment with
the definitions themselves. This is what interests me.
> >I think the actual enemy of experiment in music is steadfast and
> >inflexible definition.
>
> agreed - but as noted above - a definition is needed - isn't finding the
> definition what experimental music is all about.
I don't think so. I think the expanding of the definition, and the
possibilities of definition are what experimental music is about. Once
you've found your definition, why bother any longer? This is when
artists settle into their own private language.
> >For instance, there is, in my experience of universities and music
> >writers, a notable bias. "Experimental music" must be a development of
> >Western orchestral/choral tradition, or it isn't worth consideration.
> >Virtually every book I've picked up in my fairly short life that talks
> >about "experimental" music states this by omission. This sort of
> >snobbery always appalled me, and still does. What gives Western
> >"classical" music some sort of hegemony to define what is acceptable
> >for experiment, and what tools must be used? I'd say even further that
> >it is precisely this sort of stringency that stifles experiments.
>
> Well to an extent but we do get with the beginnings and through the 20th
> century a strong external influence - begging with debussy? amongst
> others.
Sure--while still remaining completely within the Western orchestral
tradition. Britten bringing the sound of a gamelan into his orchestra
doesn't change the context, merely the possibilities of tone.
> >I remember Cecil Taylor saying something pointed about "avant-garde"
> >music. He said, "The problem with being 'avant-garde' is that those
> >guys always depend on what's already been done, because they feel some
> >need to stay 'ahead' always, when they could just be working." I feel
> >the same way about self-proclaimed experimenters.
>
> But "just working" within the genre isn't experimental. Looking at other
> cultures *was*. Its final debasement is World Music - Afro Celtic
> whatever and Latin goes to Vienna...
Well, there's another area entirely... Afro-Celtic schlock galls me.
But there are interesting things in "world music" (remember, this is
simply a marketer's term, and has nothing to do with reality). For
instance, Portuguese bagpipe music, completely free of the Western
tonal system, and in fact much closer to the sonic realm of Partch than
to The Chieftains. Inuit lullabies indeed.
> >Having been a scientist once, I'd have to say there is not much value
> >in isolated experiments. In fact, the purpose of experiments is to make
> >something novel but reproducible.
>
> I thought it was to prove or disprove an idea?
To test a hypothesis, more precisely. There is *no* such thing as
proving an idea. Science allows only for disproof. But its fundamental
requirement of all experiments is that they be reproducible. Otherwise
you wind up in the Journal of Irreproducible Results--which is not
really a bad place to be.
> I've absolutely no argument with this. Those guys who on their Yamaha
> VXXX three manual electric organs who play musical show tunes in their
> living rooms and will go on doing so long as the sun remains stable ....
> i've nothing against them .. why the quest for novelty - why climb
> mountains?
How Zen of you. And I don't mean that in a good way. ;)
Obviously you value novelty above other things in music. I simply value
music. Novelty is neutral: it may be beautiful, like Ligeti's Lux
Eterna, or it may be completely stupid, like any number of things I
have created myself. Pursuing novelty for its own sake--well, I've
better things to do. I'd rather listen to something enjoyable or
possibly even make something enjoyable. I don't mean this in the sense
of Muzak, but simply in the sense of aiding and abetting my own
emotional, intellectual, spiritual, social growth.
> >"What's the experiment, then? Don't they know this experiment has been
> >done?" Still, what says an experiment can be done only once?
>
> Nothing - but its only use is educational in that case - which is a good
> and noble thing - though you might not agree if your a laboratory rat
> pinned out for some school kid to cut up. Why question the so called
> experiment - why bring it into question - only in order to establish if
> it truly is something new. And hey - it one day might be! But that it
> seems is hard - so lets just call whatever "experimental" - even if its
> Nixon in China - naked on ice.
I know you know this, but I need to say it anyway. Not all experiments
are worthy. Not all experiments are successful. Not all experiments are
complete (or even completable). Not all are interesting. Not all are
new.
One of the great ironies I find in this fetish for novelty is that
Western composers go on and on and on and on some more about seeking
the new. Even you yourself seem to imply that an experiment be done
only once.
Okay. Abolish all written scores, then. The moment a score is written,
it is evidence of an experiment (and presumably a path toward
reproduction). This will mean that there can be only one performance of
every experimental work, and if you miss it--tough. Any reproduction
means that it is no longer new.
And yet where would Western music be without its fetish of the score?
From Berlioz on, music would grind to a halt, as legions of musicians
couldn't figure out what to do with themselves, not being guided every
second of their day in their "performances." Even Stockhausen insisting
that there be one correct way to perform his work--this is of course
the pinnacle of ludicrous notions.
> > On the subject of John Zorn, I'd say
> >that Cobra is an experiment in what can be done with the idea of a
> >"score," so precious to classical musicians.
>
> I'd disagree here - by use of the "its been done before" argument.
I'd say then, that you've missed the very point of Cobra. It most
definitely had not been done before. Even if it had, that wouldn't
invalidate it as an experiment. You might think so, but then, you're
looking at its irony, looseness, game playing, etc, rather than its
essence, which is much more exploration than you give it credit for. In
fact, I'd go further, and tell you that the score of Cobra is fairly
meaningless. What makes Cobra is its very particular set of musicians
on any given night, and whoever happens to be blowing the whistle. This
isn't aleatory music a la Cage. It's something different still.
I've heard performances of Cobra that were bloody awful. Several, in
fact. I've only heard two that affected me at all positively. In fact,
what the score doesn't "say" is that Cobra is much more an
orchestration of personality in music than it is music itself.
> It communicates these ideas regarding music. Should music involve sound?
> Again this has been done - as i keep repeating just because innovation
> as experiment is difficult doesn't mean its invalid.
More like, "Should music have a score at all?" I think. That's much
more Zorn's point.
Innovation as experiment is not so difficult as you think. We all
innovate every day of our lives, some of us musically. And of course
this neither invalidates it, nor trivializes it. It just is what it is.
Some innovations suck; some don't.
> But this is good is it not - as if that's what they think - you at least
> know it is - the other approach - silence avoids this foot in mouth
> nicely. What you seem to imply - almost advocate is ignorance. If noize
> groups are basically copying Mertzbow (have i the correct spelling) -
> and that's all - then the *silence* is ironically accounted for.
There are far too many Merzbow clones in the world. I'd love to off
their heads, but what people copying Merzbow really need is a kick in
the arse. As Mingus once said to Jackie McLean, "You have your own
style, now go out and find your own ideas."
Ideas are important to me. I'd hardly advocate ignorance at all. I just
happen to believe there is a way of discussing things that need not be
filled with argot, neither with Francophone references nor footnotes
from Wittgenstein, nor allusions to music as a subconscious language,
etc, etc. I believe communication need not and ought not obfuscate
matters. It may certainly raise more paradoxes and questions, and that
is good, but purposeless navel-gazing is something I can do well enough
on my own that I hardly need Jacques Derrida or Malcolm Bradbury or
anyone else to tell me how.
> To repeat Cages experiments is perhaps silly - to ignore them is for
> anyone interested in experimental music odd (at best) - other than he
> makes experiment perhaps more difficult. He might be considered to make
> it impossible. BTW - look at his scores - e.g. Fontana Mix - what is
> Zorn up to re - Cobra? You see i get the feeling that the boot is now
> firmly on the other foot. The avant-garde - of the 50s and 60s are now
> fair game. And out from the woodwork all the G&S fans crawl to heave
> abuse on the "pretentious" - Cage in Schoenberg's words was an inventor
> - with a sense of humour - but also a seriousness. You cite "single
> worst influence" but i don't see how you can drag ethics into the
> exploration of music.
I think the avant-garde should *always* be fair game. And Gilbert &
Sullivan fans will abuse them always. Such is the nature of "music"
wherein people have hardened and irrefrangible definitions of "what is
music." I don't think music or any other art is an either/or
proposition. There is a great continuum of definition from the most
banal, mundane uses of the word to the most lavish. That is exciting to
me, but only when shared with other similarly excitable people.
Brickbats have great uses, and so does praise of the simple. That you
mention Part and Tavener intrigues me. Paul Griffiths, for instance,
includes five bars of one of Part's scores as his summary of "nothing
more to say in music."
> Post-modernist credentials again can be abused. Post-modernism is in a
> way a recognition of the likes of Cage. You may regard this as bad? Why
> - because it critiques the sort of music *you like* ? Like it or not we
> have to work in a nihilistic post-modern world, or do we start writing
> Masses? for baroque organ - AKA Tavener... Part et al.
There is in this paragraph of yours an annoying assumption: that I
dislike post-modernism because it critiques things I like. First off, I
consider post-modernism bad for many reasons, and none of them involve
critique. In fact, I'd say post-modernism critiques virtually nothing.
More often, it simply pronounces and cajoles--and of course it offers
the easy way out, for people who cannot be bothered to get off their
arses and *do something*. Disproof of its fundamental tenets is simply
too easy and obvious. If there's no language, make one. If there's no
artist, become one. If there's no individuality, show some. Again, some
ideas are so stupid that only a college graduate could believe them.
Unfortunately Po-Mo hasn't yet had a good Samuel Johnson to come along
and kick Bishop Berkeley's po-mo rock.
No, what's bad about post-modernism is that it tends to reduce all
discussion to silence--the very silence of which you complain, in fact.
Whatever modernism was, and no one I know seems to be sure of it, it
did at least place emphasis upon creation. Po-mo can't even do that.
It's all about "analysis" (carried out, of course, in languages it says
do not exist), appropriation (the lamprey on the back of the shark),
and "context." Put a picture frame around live human beings. How
clever. How "contextual". A profound analysis of the alienation of art
from its subject. Blah blah blah.
I would opine that the silence you witness here on the newsgroup in
part stems from a sense of futility. Why bother trying to explain
something to another person anyway? And what makes a person feel more
futile than being *told* as though it were gospel that they can't think
anything, do anything, read anything, act anything, become anything on
their own? No individuals. No origins. No destinations. Just abstract
ideas in the world of word balloons, and the greased palms of a bunch
of Frogs keeping their plush collegiate jobs.
Nope, no thank you. If that's the only alternative to Victorian
stiffness, then it's time for suicide. I happen to think there are far
greater, far more meaningful options, however.
> Well you do as much credit - well more or is it less to Derrida than you
> do Cage. The Oxford Dons - think he was probably the worst thing for
> philosophy... sure i think Cage and Derrida give us problems - that's
> part of the game - to overcome these - not ignore them - that's what you
> seem to wish, and that's what we find here? What spells the death of
> discussion is the accepted 'genre' or truth of the matter. If we take
> Derrida as an example - he has more than any of the Dons created
> discussion, opened up language and ideas of what ideas are...
Because the Oxford Dons are categorical cowards. And really, would
anyone take Derrida seriously, if it hadn't been for various academes
protesting against him? They've given him more mileage out of his four
little books of dung than he ever could have had on his own.
For me, Cage and Derrida present no problems whatsoever. They have been
heard, processed and dismissed out of my life. There is *nothing* to
overcome about them. If anything need be overcome, it is people's
notions of seriousness about such things. Let them all argue about it,
and I'll go right on ahead enjoying my life.
> >Po-mo drivel does not interest me.
> Which is a pity as its the world you live in. Would we be back in the
> Victorian era where music was a good tune - is that what you are saying?
> These dangerous ideas have been around throughout the last century,
> post-modernism is their consequence - and in somecases avoidance by
> naivety and resort to kitsch popularism part of this.
Well, Mr. Whitehead, it may be the world *you* live in, but it is
definitely not mine. My world is a bit more expansive, and always able
to be recreated with infinite malleability. What was Debussy's line
about Wagner? "A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn?" That
is precisely what I thought of the Victorian notion of music, and it is
precisely what I think about post-modernism. Eventually the dull ox
gores itself to death. And I am patient.
> But they - speak volumes - that you think its rubbish puts you firmly in
> the audience booing and jeering a Schoenberg or Cage concert, yet its
> their work who made Zorn's Cobra acceptable - it (cobra) arrives
> completely unchangingly recognisable as music. Nowhere do i see a
> general consensus of approval for post-modern art any more than modern
> art had, what's needed is an engagement with it - not a rejection of it.
> Anti-academic popularism is also po-mo - don't you know. Zorn can only
> exist in the glow of ironic po-mo parody and anti-colonialism -
> (discuss... :-)
Getting beyond the obvious point that my "engagement" with all these
ludicrous ideas *led* to my "rejection" of them, I assure you I'm
hardly in that audience of which you speak. I'm a tolerant person. Just
because I dislike someone's music doesn't mean I think the world is
ending. I just say, it's not for me. Since you mention Mahler, I'm sure
you know he conducted Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony #1 and had to step
off the podium and beg people to stay and listen to the rest. On the
way home, Alma asked him, "But do you like it?" "No," said Mahler, "but
the younger generation is always right."
Now I love that story. The younger generation is always right
indeed--because they have the right to experiment, to define and
redefine. After all, they have to live with the results.
"Popularism" as you call it is surely one of the most stupid ideas ever
presented on earth. That which appeals to the masses is holy, sure.
"Eat garbage: 100 billion flies can't be wrong" pretty accurately
dispatches that old argument. And yet, there is nothing wrong with
appealing to the masses. I like Part and I even like some of Tavener's
work, though of course Peteris Vasks is much more my style. I'm
perfectly willing to say what I think is "avant" and what is not. But I
don't ever believe that I have the final answer--after all, I may have
missed something.
I still believe in old-fashioned things, for sure: conversation,
emotion, sensory experience...these are indeed old-fashioned,
particularly these days, when simply blathering on about things with
which one is semi-conversant is a sign of genius.
So, let's be clear on this. This is what I think.
1) No area of human art is exempt from experiment.
2) Experiment is its own reward, but only for the experimenter.
3) Value judgments and interpretations still will be, and must be made.
4) Music can be experimental and still suck.
5) Music can be popular and still be great.
6) Novelty is only novelty.
7) Innovation can go hand in hand with conservation--or not.
8) Genres need expansion and redefinition even more than the
avant-garde, because they lean closest to cliche at all times, and to
keep them vitally alive is more difficult.
9) Avant-garde is not necessarily experimental.
10) Experiments need firm foundations and clear hypotheses to test. The
foundation and hypothesis is often not obvious to outside observers.
11) More discussion, honest and lucid discussion, is always better than
silence.
12) Silence is often necessary, and is sometimes a result rather than a
cause.
I have other thoughts, too, but that's what I think when I think about
"experimental music."
om shanti
James Whitehead
<bc...@scnnospam.org> writes
>In article <3QPaiBAK5$H+E...@jliat.demon.co.uk>, James Whitehead
><jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> >Can it be a focus of experimental music to experiment with the
>> >audience? Can it be experimental to realize a work so completely bland
>> >and innocuous that it is impossible to recall? Need experimental music
>> >always push formal boundaries, or is it equally possibly to create
>> >experimental music completely within genre boundaries, yet subvert the
>> >genre simultaneously? My answer, of course, to all these questions is
>> >"Yes," but this is heresy in most circles.
>>
>> I'd answer yes also - but with a proviso or two - once an experiment is
>> made - why endlessly repeat it - other than by way of demonstration. And
>> i'm not sure of "genre" boundary - if experimental music is associated
>> with the novel - then it must always be on the edge. Of course the
>> problem with that isn't "its all been done" - as that's the natural
>> conclusion in being on the edge - but its hard work. The wheel now seems
>> obvious! What makes me suspicious of those working within the genre
>> they wish to subvert is its never barber shop singing or recorder
>> playing...
>
>Actually, funny you should say this...I know of at least four instances
>of experimental recorder playing, and at least one avant-garde
>barbershop piece.
Bad choice of examples - perhaps swanney whistles - but this is an
attempt to discuss your idea of experiment within the genre... One
wonders what the examples you give actually do.
>
>Apropos, I'd say that experimental music needn't always be associated
>with the novel. One can experiment with anything. That's the beauty of
>experiment to me. This in no way, of course, means that the experiment
>will be 1) successful; 2) comprehensible; 3) reproducible; 4) worthy.
Then i just don't know in this case how you are going to define
experimental music.
>
>> >Why is it not experimental? I don't know.
>>
>> Because its opera.
>
>Well, that's a little cheap, I'd say. So is Die Soldaten, and so is
>Eight Songs for a Mad King. Doesn't the world of opera need also to be
>redefined and rejuvenated at least as much as jazz or Western classical
>music? More, I'd say.
That may well be the case - if its possible. The rejuvenation or re-
definition of Jazz or opera is i would say a separate activity, like the
redefinition of barber shop singing. But i doubt very much if this in in
the "tradition" of experimentalism, given that it accepts a given genre,
a given orthodoxy - and sees only "experimentalism" as a flavour - a
surface gloss on a fading set of constructs. The abandonment by Reich -
and others of the experimentalism which produced its gonna rain,
pendulum music etc was a move back to "opera" in all its given
orthodoxy. It represents a failure of modernity and a return to an
orthodoxy which is a best "simple minded" - at its worse in bad taste.
That is using the holocaust as the basis for an opera reflecting on ones
own childhood - and pushing this out as entertainment. No need for me to
say i like or dislike this work - just explain - like 'the cave'
exploits real issues of life and death for entertainment - what next
from reich - the twin towers an opera or disney theme park ride. Again
not that i'm complaining - i'm saying i don't find such works
experimental in the musical sense. Opera does represent a movement away-
not towards music, always did and does now more so. There is nothing
wrong with the shallowness of disney or the cave - but its just not as
far as i can see being experimental, maybe you could enlighten me.
>
>
>> and i hadn't read that when i wrote the above... Do you like Nixon in
>> China - ?
>
>I hate Nixon in China. But I do like the image of Mao Zedong breaking
>into an aria, so it's not completely without merit. The Chairman Dances
>summarizes the whole opera neatly, and to me is more interesting.
And - its not about music much is it?
>
>> Yes - but represents a retreat from abstraction - of experimentalism -
>> back to opera - story telling - Peter and the Wolf. Gilbert and Sullivan
>> - who no doubt were very smart...
>
>Ahhh...now here's an issue. Need "Experiment" always tend toward
>further abstraction?
Yes i think so - as otherwise it engages in politics of say Nixon - now
is Nixon visiting China to be considered something of a musical event.
Even if it is - then the act itself was Nixon's, i've simply no idea
what Adams is doing? If we are using the word experiment we are i think
offering a parallelism with science - and does science seek more
abstract explanations - yes i think it does, and doesn't repeating old
experiments of the previous 200 years not much help the search for
greater abstraction of explanation. Obviously music has other issues,
like opera, like muzak, pop, folk whatever, but why the attack on the
avant garde - why the need to challenge the idea of boundary pushing.
The only reason i can find here is that you don't like it. Well i might
not like it either - it might be difficult, simple, or boring, but the
activity of experiment in science isn't i think done for entertainment
and so i'd assume similar in music.
>
>
>> I'd take issue with some of the list. But the alternative is to say - it
>> seems any and everything can be considered experimental - then you've no
>> definition at all, what this discussion group should be about is arguing
>> the distinction- (bit didactic of me!) and not a sales board - or like
>> dislike listing.
>
>Well, I think you're smart enough to know the difference between kinds
>of definition. I'm not interested in prescriptive grammar (not even of
>music). I am all in favor of prototype definitions, rather than
>structural ones, precisely because it *does* allow for experiment with
>the definitions themselves. This is what interests me.
I don't think i'm actually that smart - its why i tend to the plastic
arts and practical arts - where one experiments practically with the
definitions. I'd still like to know what "The cave" has to do with
music?
>
>> >I think the actual enemy of experiment in music is steadfast and
>> >inflexible definition.
>>
>> agreed - but as noted above - a definition is needed - isn't finding the
>> definition what experimental music is all about.
>
>I don't think so. I think the expanding of the definition, and the
>possibilities of definition are what experimental music is about. Once
>you've found your definition, why bother any longer? This is when
>artists settle into their own private language.
Well then you seem to imply that the art work only illustrates the
definition - but i think certainly in the case of experimentalism it is
the definition. The cave my be an exposition of themes - cultural and
religious histories of the middle east - a newsreel - what is its gonna
rain an exposition of - if anything of itself- an exposition of two tape
loops. Once you've found your definition you can settle for that - but
the tendency is to want to repeat the act of discovery - and you cant
discover the discovered. And the idea of a private language is
interesting as all discoveries which are new - at the point of discovery
are private.
>
>> >For instance, there is, in my experience of universities and music
>> >writers, a notable bias. "Experimental music" must be a development of
>> >Western orchestral/choral tradition, or it isn't worth consideration.
>> >Virtually every book I've picked up in my fairly short life that talks
>> >about "experimental" music states this by omission. This sort of
>> >snobbery always appalled me, and still does. What gives Western
>> >"classical" music some sort of hegemony to define what is acceptable
>> >for experiment, and what tools must be used? I'd say even further that
>> >it is precisely this sort of stringency that stifles experiments.
>>
>> Well to an extent but we do get with the beginnings and through the 20th
>> century a strong external influence - begging with debussy? amongst
>> others.
>
>Sure--while still remaining completely within the Western orchestral
>tradition. Britten bringing the sound of a gamelan into his orchestra
>doesn't change the context, merely the possibilities of tone.
Yes the context is altered eventually - Riley and Young seem to have
abandoned the context of orchestra - as well as others of course. There
maybe a conservative retreat back to the orthodoxy offered by the
orchestra - i dont know much of what Reich is up to these days - but a
symphony by players in DJs from him would not be a surprise. 'The
prodigal son' would be a good title.
>
>> >I remember Cecil Taylor saying something pointed about "avant-garde"
>> >music. He said, "The problem with being 'avant-garde' is that those
>> >guys always depend on what's already been done, because they feel some
>> >need to stay 'ahead' always, when they could just be working." I feel
>> >the same way about self-proclaimed experimenters.
>>
>> But "just working" within the genre isn't experimental. Looking at other
>> cultures *was*. Its final debasement is World Music - Afro Celtic
>> whatever and Latin goes to Vienna...
>
>Well, there's another area entirely... Afro-Celtic schlock galls me.
>But there are interesting things in "world music" (remember, this is
>simply a marketer's term, and has nothing to do with reality). For
>instance, Portuguese bagpipe music, completely free of the Western
>tonal system, and in fact much closer to the sonic realm of Partch than
>to The Chieftains. Inuit lullabies indeed.
And this is all good stuff no doubt - but what do we find in the section
next to 'world music' or 'TV themes' called "experimental". Anything?
>
>
>> >Having been a scientist once, I'd have to say there is not much value
>> >in isolated experiments. In fact, the purpose of experiments is to make
>> >something novel but reproducible.
>>
>> I thought it was to prove or disprove an idea?
>
>To test a hypothesis, more precisely. There is *no* such thing as
>proving an idea. Science allows only for disproof. But its fundamental
>requirement of all experiments is that they be reproducible. Otherwise
>you wind up in the Journal of Irreproducible Results--which is not
>really a bad place to be.
>
>> I've absolutely no argument with this. Those guys who on their Yamaha
>> VXXX three manual electric organs who play musical show tunes in their
>> living rooms and will go on doing so long as the sun remains stable ....
>> i've nothing against them .. why the quest for novelty - why climb
>> mountains?
>
>How Zen of you. And I don't mean that in a good way. ;)
Zen? - well there is a radio show of the stuff i sometimes listen to,
but that's not zen. Strange how you knock zen? a religion which arrived
at Japan via china from india - and now you see it inappropriate to
travelling further eastward to California.
>
>Obviously you value novelty above other things in music.
No - i like the act of seeing something new - of discovery-
> I simply value
>music.
well i guess i'm not a real musician - in that i only value it as a
medium, a convention...
> Novelty is neutral: it may be beautiful, like Ligeti's Lux
>Eterna, or it may be completely stupid, like any number of things I
>have created myself. Pursuing novelty for its own sake--well, I've
>better things to do. I'd rather listen to something enjoyable or
>possibly even make something enjoyable. I don't mean this in the sense
>of Muzak, but simply in the sense of aiding and abetting my own
>emotional, intellectual, spiritual, social growth.
That is Muzak - and i quite understand this is a post-modern phenomenon,
not wanting anymore "to boldly go".... but exploration like
experimentation produces new things - which may be ugly nihilistic and
dangerous to ones emotional intellectual spiritual and social growth -
- better to burn out than fade away -
>
>> >"What's the experiment, then? Don't they know this experiment has been
>> >done?" Still, what says an experiment can be done only once?
>>
>> Nothing - but its only use is educational in that case - which is a good
>> and noble thing - though you might not agree if your a laboratory rat
>> pinned out for some school kid to cut up. Why question the so called
>> experiment - why bring it into question - only in order to establish if
>> it truly is something new. And hey - it one day might be! But that it
>> seems is hard - so lets just call whatever "experimental" - even if its
>> Nixon in China - naked on ice.
>
>I know you know this, but I need to say it anyway. Not all experiments
>are worthy. Not all experiments are successful. Not all experiments are
>complete (or even completable). Not all are interesting. Not all are
>new.
Most are shit.
>
>One of the great ironies I find in this fetish for novelty is that
>Western composers go on and on and on and on some more about seeking
>the new. Even you yourself seem to imply that an experiment be done
>only once.
Only needs to be done once - though it maybe in science as well as music
repeatable. The fetish for novelty however is just that - maybe an evil
addiction which has brought the world to a dangerous state. If you know
the film Matrix - which tablet would you take - the blue or red pill?
"you take the blue pill ... you wake up and believe whatever you want to
believe" - that's you're aesthetic and programme for music isn't it?
>
>Okay. Abolish all written scores, then. The moment a score is written,
>it is evidence of an experiment (and presumably a path toward
>reproduction). This will mean that there can be only one performance of
>every experimental work, and if you miss it--tough. Any reproduction
>means that it is no longer new.
Which accounts for something called "free improvisation" - however each
written score can be considered different and also each performance. But
i think maybe you are deliberately confusing novelty as the criteria and
not as the consequence. You must know this from science - the procedure
is not to produce new theories (as they are fairly trivial) but these
arise out of a consequence of the activity of discovery.
>
>And yet where would Western music be without its fetish of the score?
>From Berlioz on, music would grind to a halt, as legions of musicians
>couldn't figure out what to do with themselves, not being guided every
>second of their day in their "performances." Even Stockhausen insisting
>that there be one correct way to perform his work--this is of course
>the pinnacle of ludicrous notions.
I don't know about pinnacle - If an explorer decides that going
somewhere new is the criteria of exploration he / she would make some
mistakes - like visiting Margate - assuming as they hadn't been there
before it would be "exploration" ... you seem to be making
(deliberately) the same mistake. Maybe some "experimental" musicians
mistakenly explore well known sea side towns as a novel experiences for
themselves.... mr zorn? - lets see
>
>> > On the subject of John Zorn, I'd say
>> >that Cobra is an experiment in what can be done with the idea of a
>> >"score," so precious to classical musicians.
>>
>> I'd disagree here - by use of the "its been done before" argument.
>
>I'd say then, that you've missed the very point of Cobra. It most
>definitely had not been done before. Even if it had, that wouldn't
>invalidate it as an experiment. You might think so, but then, you're
>looking at its irony, looseness, game playing, etc, rather than its
>essence, which is much more exploration than you give it credit for. In
>fact, I'd go further, and tell you that the score of Cobra is fairly
>meaningless. What makes Cobra is its very particular set of musicians
>on any given night, and whoever happens to be blowing the whistle. This
>isn't aleatory music a la Cage. It's something different still.
>
>I've heard performances of Cobra that were bloody awful. Several, in
>fact. I've only heard two that affected me at all positively. In fact,
>what the score doesn't "say" is that Cobra is much more an
>orchestration of personality in music than it is music itself.
Then its exploring personality - as i said - you can visit Margate and
have a good or a bad time. If cobra is experimental - then my making tea
is equally so. And again my liking the performance on an occasion or tea
is nothing to do with the idea of experimental music, or experiment.
However interesting Cobra may be - i simply say its not an experiment
within the notion of experimentalism in music, or not a very original
one at least as i heard the piece first back in 1969.
>
>> It communicates these ideas regarding music. Should music involve sound?
>> Again this has been done - as i keep repeating just because innovation
>> as experiment is difficult doesn't mean its invalid.
>
>More like, "Should music have a score at all?" I think. That's much
>more Zorn's point.
some has some hasn't - scoreless music becomes improvisation - then
there are scores in the heads of the improvisers. The end of this is
either noise or silence of semi organised forms and marks a return to
primitive music with the exception of its being recorded.
>
>Innovation as experiment is not so difficult as you think.
I didn't say it was - its the particular practice of experimental music
which as a by product is innovative.
> We all
>innovate every day of our lives, some of us musically. And of course
>this neither invalidates it, nor trivializes it. It just is what it is.
>Some innovations suck; some don't.
But that doesn't account for the dynamic of western thought. Every day
is different, and you can do different things every day - but that's not
to engage in the process of discovery that is associated with modern
music AKA experimental music.
>
>> But this is good is it not - as if that's what they think - you at least
>> know it is - the other approach - silence avoids this foot in mouth
>> nicely. What you seem to imply - almost advocate is ignorance. If noize
>> groups are basically copying Mertzbow (have i the correct spelling) -
>> and that's all - then the *silence* is ironically accounted for.
>
>There are far too many Merzbow clones in the world. I'd love to off
>their heads, but what people copying Merzbow really need is a kick in
>the arse. As Mingus once said to Jackie McLean, "You have your own
>style, now go out and find your own ideas."
>
>Ideas are important to me. I'd hardly advocate ignorance at all. I just
>happen to believe there is a way of discussing things that need not be
>filled with argot, neither with Francophone references nor footnotes
>from Wittgenstein, nor allusions to music as a subconscious language,
>etc, etc. I believe communication need not and ought not obfuscate
>matters. It may certainly raise more paradoxes and questions, and that
>is good, but purposeless navel-gazing is something I can do well enough
>on my own that I hardly need Jacques Derrida or Malcolm Bradbury or
>anyone else to tell me how.
Telling you how is the one thing that brother Jacques i think would not
tell you. I happen - at your prompting - to be listening to Cobra as i
write this - and what a sense of nostalgia it brings, its somehow very
comforting - very ... nice. And again at the risk of you getting me
wrong - i like it. Now Derrida i don't like - i find his writing hard -
it fucks up my head.. and like the idiot i am i'm drawn back to this - i
guess i want to misunderstand him also.
>
>> To repeat Cages experiments is perhaps silly - to ignore them is for
>> anyone interested in experimental music odd (at best) - other than he
>> makes experiment perhaps more difficult. He might be considered to make
>> it impossible. BTW - look at his scores - e.g. Fontana Mix - what is
>> Zorn up to re - Cobra? You see i get the feeling that the boot is now
>> firmly on the other foot. The avant-garde - of the 50s and 60s are now
>> fair game. And out from the woodwork all the G&S fans crawl to heave
>> abuse on the "pretentious" - Cage in Schoenberg's words was an inventor
>> - with a sense of humour - but also a seriousness. You cite "single
>> worst influence" but i don't see how you can drag ethics into the
>> exploration of music.
>
>I think the avant-garde should *always* be fair game.
Why? Its a very endangered species. If its game then you will see it
soon becomes extinct.
>And Gilbert &
>Sullivan fans will abuse them always. Such is the nature of "music"
>wherein people have hardened and irrefrangible definitions of "what is
>music." I don't think music or any other art is an either/or
>proposition. There is a great continuum of definition from the most
>banal, mundane uses of the word to the most lavish. That is exciting to
>me, but only when shared with other similarly excitable people.
>Brickbats have great uses, and so does praise of the simple. That you
>mention Part and Tavener intrigues me. Paul Griffiths, for instance,
>includes five bars of one of Part's scores as his summary of "nothing
>more to say in music."
Its at the point of nothing more to say that we either become extinct or
realise that there is in actual fact is something more to say.
>
>> Post-modernist credentials again can be abused. Post-modernism is in a
>> way a recognition of the likes of Cage. You may regard this as bad? Why
>> - because it critiques the sort of music *you like* ? Like it or not we
>> have to work in a nihilistic post-modern world, or do we start writing
>> Masses? for baroque organ - AKA Tavener... Part et al.
>
>There is in this paragraph of yours an annoying assumption: that I
>dislike post-modernism because it critiques things I like.
Its a question..
>First off, I
>consider post-modernism bad for many reasons, and none of them involve
>critique. In fact, I'd say post-modernism critiques virtually nothing.
>More often, it simply pronounces and cajoles--and of course it offers
>the easy way out, for people who cannot be bothered to get off their
>arses and *do something*. Disproof of its fundamental tenets is simply
>too easy and obvious. If there's no language, make one. If there's no
>artist, become one. If there's no individuality, show some. Again, some
>ideas are so stupid that only a college graduate could believe them.
>Unfortunately Po-Mo hasn't yet had a good Samuel Johnson to come along
>and kick Bishop Berkeley's po-mo rock.
Again i see it quite the opposite - the general trend is to sneer at
post-modernism as phoney intellectualism, that's the easy way out. I'd
like to meet someone who finds it easy!
>
>No, what's bad about post-modernism is that it tends to reduce all
>discussion to silence--the very silence of which you complain, in fact.
>Whatever modernism was, and no one I know seems to be sure of it, it
>did at least place emphasis upon creation. Po-mo can't even do that.
>It's all about "analysis" (carried out, of course, in languages it says
>do not exist), appropriation (the lamprey on the back of the shark),
>and "context." Put a picture frame around live human beings. How
>clever. How "contextual". A profound analysis of the alienation of art
>from its subject. Blah blah blah.
which in a sense is exactly what differentiates Cobra from its 1950s
copies. Post modernity represents the problem of modernity, Cobra is a
good musical sign in that case. And of course you are quite right it po-
mo -doesn't innovate (in the modernist sense) - but hey that should suit
you! I certainly see postmodernism as a basis for moving on - its
stability is unimportant, i don't go with the standing on giants stuff-
in particular it offers subjectivity as a means forward - even a private
language. Now i'd be at odds with many supporters of po-mo, but its
perfectly possible to move on on the basis of abuse -
>
>I would opine that the silence you witness here on the newsgroup in
>part stems from a sense of futility.
Maybe - i was wondering - or maybe those who are involved with music
don't bother with it.
>Why bother trying to explain
>something to another person anyway? And what makes a person feel more
>futile than being *told* as though it were gospel that they can't think
>anything, do anything, read anything, act anything, become anything on
>their own? No individuals. No origins. No destinations. Just abstract
>ideas in the world of word balloons, and the greased palms of a bunch
>of Frogs keeping their plush collegiate jobs.
Well if we start to communicate we might hear things we don't like?
>
>Nope, no thank you. If that's the only alternative to Victorian
>stiffness, then it's time for suicide. I happen to think there are far
>greater, far more meaningful options, however.
Care to share?
>
>> Well you do as much credit - well more or is it less to Derrida than you
>> do Cage. The Oxford Dons - think he was probably the worst thing for
>> philosophy... sure i think Cage and Derrida give us problems - that's
>> part of the game - to overcome these - not ignore them - that's what you
>> seem to wish, and that's what we find here? What spells the death of
>> discussion is the accepted 'genre' or truth of the matter. If we take
>> Derrida as an example - he has more than any of the Dons created
>> discussion, opened up language and ideas of what ideas are...
>
>Because the Oxford Dons are categorical cowards. And really, would
>anyone take Derrida seriously, if it hadn't been for various academes
>protesting against him? They've given him more mileage out of his four
>little books of dung than he ever could have had on his own.
>
>For me, Cage and Derrida present no problems whatsoever. They have been
>heard, processed and dismissed out of my life. There is *nothing* to
>overcome about them. If anything need be overcome, it is people's
>notions of seriousness about such things. Let them all argue about it,
>and I'll go right on ahead enjoying my life.
Fine. You enjoy yourself - but again isn't that not what experimental
music is about? If art and music as art is difficult - then enjoyment is
lacking- at least at first.
>
>> >Po-mo drivel does not interest me.
>
>> Which is a pity as its the world you live in. Would we be back in the
>> Victorian era where music was a good tune - is that what you are saying?
>> These dangerous ideas have been around throughout the last century,
>> post-modernism is their consequence - and in somecases avoidance by
>> naivety and resort to kitsch popularism part of this.
>
>Well, Mr. Whitehead, it may be the world *you* live in, but it is
>definitely not mine. My world is a bit more expansive, and always able
>to be recreated with infinite malleability. What was Debussy's line
>about Wagner? "A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn?" That
>is precisely what I thought of the Victorian notion of music, and it is
>precisely what I think about post-modernism. Eventually the dull ox
>gores itself to death. And I am patient.
But your analogy is off the mark as Post-modernity challenges modernism
in many of its key respects - this was not the case with Wagner - who
was a definitive end of the pier player - who resorted to opera!
(I'm always amused when people say the don't live in a post modernist
world - it amounts to saying they don't live on tuesdays when its
tuesday, as they don't like tuesdays.)
>
>> But they - speak volumes - that you think its rubbish puts you firmly in
>> the audience booing and jeering a Schoenberg or Cage concert, yet its
>> their work who made Zorn's Cobra acceptable - it (cobra) arrives
>> completely unchangingly recognisable as music. Nowhere do i see a
>> general consensus of approval for post-modern art any more than modern
>> art had, what's needed is an engagement with it - not a rejection of it.
>> Anti-academic popularism is also po-mo - don't you know. Zorn can only
>> exist in the glow of ironic po-mo parody and anti-colonialism -
>> (discuss... :-)
>
>Getting beyond the obvious point that my "engagement" with all these
>ludicrous ideas *led* to my "rejection" of them,
well your description of them seems strange to me, i don't recognise
them - other than familiar cliched one.
> I assure you I'm
>hardly in that audience of which you speak. I'm a tolerant person. Just
>because I dislike someone's music doesn't mean I think the world is
>ending. I just say, it's not for me. Since you mention Mahler, I'm sure
>you know he conducted Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony #1 and had to step
>off the podium and beg people to stay and listen to the rest. On the
>way home, Alma asked him, "But do you like it?" "No," said Mahler, "but
>the younger generation is always right."
>
>Now I love that story. The younger generation is always right
>indeed--because they have the right to experiment, to define and
>redefine. After all, they have to live with the results.
The only thing here is Mahler's stupidity. It justifies any and
everything, it wasnt that Schoenberg was from a younger generation which
was the cause of the situation was it?
I wonder why it had to be 12? (i write this at the moment i realise zorn
has finished - silence then something ... Mozart i think from a distant
radio, buzz of computer - traffic noise - .....)
--
James Whitehead
Alex Temple
>
> In article <3E1DAD98...@yahoo.com>, Alex Temple
> <fiber_optiqWANTSspa...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > is "Octandre," but I've never heard anything by him that seemed
> > tonal
> > except in the very loose sense of "pitch-centric."
>
> They are definitely pitch-centered pieces, as far removed from
> German
> "atonality" (or pantonality, if you believe Schoenberg) as
> Charles
> Ives. Ecuatorial is largely tonal, as is Ameriques, and sizable
> portions of Integrales.
>
on one CD -- very convenient. :)
> My idea about Cage:
[his idea about Cage snipped]
Fair enough, I guess. I haven't heard much of his later work, but I did
enjoy seeing "Music for ______" in concert quite a bit. One of those
pieces that seems to make the passage of time irrelevant. I'd probably
find it boring on a recording.
--
Alex Temple - NP: Radiohead - OK Computer
Alex Temple
>
> 9) Avant-garde is not necessarily experimental.
I generally agree with your thoughts, but I don't understand what you
mean by this. Care to clarify?
--
Alex Temple
Marian Try Slaughter
<fiber_optiqWANTSspa...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Om shanti wrote:
>>
>> 9) Avant-garde is not necessarily experimental.
>
>I generally agree with your thoughts, but I don't understand what you
>mean by this. Care to clarify?
This may not be what he meant by it, but I'll throw my .02 in here.
Avant-garde, IMO, can be pretty easily the last refuge of the talentless or
overly pretentious. Its a genre name like many other than very quickly
becomes meaningless - It doesn't seem to mean experimental, it often refers
to something that is obtuse and akward, which does not necessarily refer to
something that is experimental. Anyhow. Cynicism aside.
The other reason that Avant-Garde (and this is probably a better reason)
doesn't equate experimental is that as I've seen it, Avant-Garde focuses
primarily on things that are well... for lack of a better word, weird. It
tries to avoid being in any way in the mainstream, and tries to keep itself
on the fringes. However, staying on the fringes of what is
popular/normal/whatever doesn't necessarily mean that you're experimenting
- it just means you're trying to stay on those fringes. I mean, You can
have some pretty experimental music while sticking closely to popular forms
- and in my experience, that would not in the least be considered
Avant-Garde.
Anyhow. My .02
np: autechre - anti
"cultures that can identify taupe are just pretentious."
Simon - mhm27x5
Om shanti
<fiber_optiqWANTSspa...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I gotta listen to this stuff again. I think I have all of those pieces
> on one CD -- very convenient. :)
Hey, Varese is cool. My favorite part of Integrales is the way he
fragments and recomposes the little Spanish trumpet song throughout the
first half. Quite a character. And of course the Poeme Electronique is
one of my very favorite pieces of electronic music.
I have the complete works--the 2-disc set--conducted by Riccardo
Chailly, which is definitely worthwhile. I also have the Boulez
versions of most of them, and the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble--now
out of print. I'll never figure out why Nonesuch won't simply leave
their catalogue alone, but that's Warner Brothers for you, ain't it?
Om shanti
Om shanti
to say that one may continue to mine the products of a single
experiment for ages without it ever becoming popular or acceptable.
Captain Beefheart, for instance, or Henry Cowell. By Mr. Whitehead's
implied definition, they would no longer be "experimental," since the
experimental "concept" is long established, but they'd still be years
ahead of the "popular girls."
om shanti
In article <uce32v8dbui5241qc...@4ax.com>, Marian Try
Om shanti
<jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >Apropos, I'd say that experimental music needn't always be associated
> >with the novel. One can experiment with anything. That's the beauty of
> >experiment to me. This in no way, of course, means that the experiment
> >will be 1) successful; 2) comprehensible; 3) reproducible; 4) worthy.
>
> Then i just don't know in this case how you are going to define
> experimental music.
Ahh...okay. I am beginning to see something.
Just as Peter Wollen talked about the two avant-gardes in film, I think
the same thing might apply here to experimental music. Correct me or
modify me as necessary, but it seems that you're concerned with:
1) Experimental music that consistently innovates in internal concept
and external form upon a Western classical/composed music foundation,
in a laboratory fashion.
> The abandonment by Reich -
> and others of the experimentalism which produced its gonna rain,
> pendulum music etc was a move back to "opera" in all its given
> orthodoxy. It represents a failure of modernity and a return to an
> orthodoxy which is a best "simple minded" - at its worse in bad taste.
Oh, I don't know. What the hell is modernity, for instance? One of the
many problems I have with "post-modernism" is that I have never
believed any po-mo definition of "modernism," so maybe it's just my
intellect fading. Or it might be that I think what's interesting about
all these alleged definitions is that some are made merely to be
functional, and others are made to be gospel, and I detest gospel.
You remember that Reich studied composition with Luciano Berio. Berio
(bless him) was giving his students various assignments with tone rows,
clusters, exotic orchestrations, etc., and he noticed Reich's
discomfort with virtually all the atonal, timbric exercises. Berio
pulled Reich aside and said, "You know, if you *want* to write tonal
music, then *write* tonal music."
I'd have to say I find very little of that sort of charitable attitude
amongst self-proclaimed post-modernists (and that word! doesn't it
immediately imply an eternal attachment to modernism, the very thing
that it supposedly overthrows?) If you have a go at Abigail
Solomon-Godeau, or Allan Sekula, or Baudrillard, or Laura Mulvey among
others, I think you will find a rather dogmatic insistence that the
"other" ways of doing things are categorically and politically *wrong*.
Now what could be more appalling than this sort of messianic attitude
by a bunch of overprivileged white folks, and what makes it so
different from the bogus notion of modernism with the capital-A ARTIST
as hierophant and shaman?
> That is using the holocaust as the basis for an opera reflecting on ones
> own childhood - and pushing this out as entertainment. No need for me to
> say i like or dislike this work - just explain - like 'the cave'
> exploits real issues of life and death for entertainment - what next
> from reich - the twin towers an opera or disney theme park ride.
I'd say you're likelier to hear this from John Adams, certainly. e.g.
The Death of Klinghoffer...
> Yes i think so - as otherwise it engages in politics of say Nixon - now
> is Nixon visiting China to be considered something of a musical event.
> Even if it is - then the act itself was Nixon's, i've simply no idea
> what Adams is doing? If we are using the word experiment we are i think
> offering a parallelism with science - and does science seek more
> abstract explanations - yes i think it does, and doesn't repeating old
> experiments of the previous 200 years not much help the search for
> greater abstraction of explanation.
I would dissent. I don't think science necessarily seeks greater
abstraction. I think the primary impulse of late 20th Century science,
certainly has been a notable turn toward synthesis, rather than
analysis. Not so much abstract theories of creation or existence
(though surely these are present--like the Anthropic-Cosmological
Principle, for instance) as more elegant explanations of singular
phenomena as interlocking pieces of a larger design. The cosmic
Watchmaker is definitely back. In fact, many of the recent experiments
in science are revisions of Boltzmann's theory of entropy (1854) and
Maxwell's ideas about "fields."
But, this continues with what I think is your practical definition of
experiment, certainly.
> Obviously music has other issues,
> like opera, like muzak, pop, folk whatever, but why the attack on the
> avant garde - why the need to challenge the idea of boundary pushing.
> The only reason i can find here is that you don't like it. Well i might
> not like it either - it might be difficult, simple, or boring, but the
> activity of experiment in science isn't i think done for entertainment
> and so i'd assume similar in music.
You knock entertainment quite wrongly, I think. It is for me
entertaining to figure out exactly how many parts per million of oxalic
acid were in that mystery solution, and equally entertaining for me to
figure out after six laborious days how the hell Structures Ia was put
together. Entertainment need not be passive absorption of unchallenging
dreck.
> Well then you seem to imply that the art work only illustrates the
> definition - but i think certainly in the case of experimentalism it is
> the definition. The cave my be an exposition of themes - cultural and
> religious histories of the middle east - a newsreel - what is its gonna
> rain an exposition of - if anything of itself- an exposition of two tape
> loops. Once you've found your definition you can settle for that - but
> the tendency is to want to repeat the act of discovery - and you cant
> discover the discovered. And the idea of a private language is
> interesting as all discoveries which are new - at the point of discovery
> are private.
The revelation is private. The thing discovered is always what it
always was, and certainly always publicly accessible (provided there is
access). It's not the acid, it's the trip, as McKenna might say. The
trip is private, the acid is easily made in your kitchen sink (or so
I've heard).
Meanwhile, the definition is neither... The work of art is an instance
from which definitions are made. Ned Rorem: "Do you honestly think when
I sit down to write that I say to myself, 'Well, it looks like a good
day to compose some Neo-Romantic music?'"
> Yes the context is altered eventually - Riley and Young seem to have
> abandoned the context of orchestra - as well as others of course. There
> maybe a conservative retreat back to the orthodoxy offered by the
> orchestra - i dont know much of what Reich is up to these days - but a
> symphony by players in DJs from him would not be a surprise. 'The
> prodigal son' would be a good title.
Heh. Why not?
> >Well, there's another area entirely... Afro-Celtic schlock galls me.
> >But there are interesting things in "world music" (remember, this is
> >simply a marketer's term, and has nothing to do with reality). For
> >instance, Portuguese bagpipe music, completely free of the Western
> >tonal system, and in fact much closer to the sonic realm of Partch than
> >to The Chieftains. Inuit lullabies indeed.
>
> And this is all good stuff no doubt - but what do we find in the section
> next to 'world music' or 'TV themes' called "experimental". Anything?
Well, "experimental" here is simply a marketing term, is it not? The
truth would be that one must always go looking for "experimental."
Anything called "experimental" by record stores is inherently
suspicious. I recently found the OHM: Pioneers of Electronic Music
compilation (featuring Ussachevsky, Spiegel, Lansky, MEV, et al) in the
"Dance/Techno/Electronica" section. I leave it to you to gather the
irony of that.
> >How Zen of you. And I don't mean that in a good way. ;)
>
> Zen? - well there is a radio show of the stuff i sometimes listen to,
> but that's not zen. Strange how you knock zen? a religion which arrived
> at Japan via china from india - and now you see it inappropriate to
> travelling further eastward to California.
I'd say that there's a big jump in cultural difference between the Far
East and the US. Being American myself, I'd say that virtually every
"Eastern" idea I've seen enter into the American collective unconscious
has been routinely corrupted, defiled, and prostituted. What it
generally strikes me as, is simply another aspect of Western
appropriation--take the results without their ideas and claim them as
novel approaches to your own ethical world. How very nauseous. I've met
very few Buddhists here, for instance, who struck me as anything other
than materialistic yuppies. So where's the revelation?
Western Zen as I've encoutered it is most essentially Dadaism claiming
a spiritual root. Barf.
> >Pursuing novelty for its own sake--well, I've
> >better things to do. I'd rather listen to something enjoyable or
> >possibly even make something enjoyable. I don't mean this in the sense
> >of Muzak, but simply in the sense of aiding and abetting my own
> >emotional, intellectual, spiritual, social growth.
>
> That is Muzak - and i quite understand this is a post-modern phenomenon,
> not wanting anymore "to boldly go".... but exploration like
> experimentation produces new things - which may be ugly nihilistic and
> dangerous to ones emotional intellectual spiritual and social growth -
> - better to burn out than fade away -
There is, I think, a big difference between discovering that the fire
burns and knowingly throwing yourself into it. You show that trace of
"modernism" there, the heroic searcher, the Ossian of Lord Byron and
the rest of the Romantics. Myself, I'm not like other people. Pain
hurts me. The question is whether or not it is the pain that makes me
stronger or the needless suffering of man on earth. I don't court
danger: my very life provides enough on its own.
Now, if you somehow associate that idea of self-preservation with
musical conservatism, well--that is up to you.
> Only needs to be done once - though it maybe in science as well as music
> repeatable. The fetish for novelty however is just that - maybe an evil
> addiction which has brought the world to a dangerous state. If you know
> the film Matrix - which tablet would you take - the blue or red pill?
> "you take the blue pill ... you wake up and believe whatever you want to
> believe" - that's you're aesthetic and programme for music isn't it?
Not having seen the Matrix, I couldn't say for sure. But since you ask,
my aesthetic programme for music is pretty simple. As a composer, I
think one should always compose what one wishes. If that be
Neo-Romantic string serenades, go for it. If it be Symphony for 100
Metronomes, sure. If it be subsonic wave transformations with shortwave
squelch punctuations, let's hear it. If that's what a composer thinks
carries an important idea that cannot be said any other way, all well
and good.
As a listener, I think one should listen to a diverse array of music:
from Muzak to Elliott Sharp to Huun Huur-Tu to Weather Report to
Babatunde Olatunji to Aesop Rock to Marty Robbins to Fela Kuti to
Mohammed Reza Shajarian to Magma to Gesualdo to The Who to David
Bedford to Yim Hok-Man to Evan Parker to Charles Mingus to Earth Wind &
Fire and everywhere between. The ideal listener to me is one that has a
vast experience with diverse musics, an unquenchable curiosity,
inexhaustible patience, and an open mind. If after going through all
the audible options one still prefers to listen to the Beatles, well so
be it.
I'm not a legislator of taste. There is plenty of music I dislike.
There is even music I dislike to which I return often, till I feel like
I understand it (Slipknot, for instance, or Erkki-Sven Tuur, or Michael
Dougherty).
> But that doesn't account for the dynamic of western thought. Every day
> is different, and you can do different things every day - but that's not
> to engage in the process of discovery that is associated with modern
> music AKA experimental music.
Now you're on dangerous ground. Modern music is a very problematical
term that is even less defensible than experimental. I presume you mean
music with a pioneering intent?
> Telling you how is the one thing that brother Jacques i think would not
> tell you. I happen - at your prompting - to be listening to Cobra as i
> write this - and what a sense of nostalgia it brings, its somehow very
> comforting - very ... nice. And again at the risk of you getting me
> wrong - i like it. Now Derrida i don't like - i find his writing hard -
> it fucks up my head.. and like the idiot i am i'm drawn back to this - i
> guess i want to misunderstand him also.
Really? I always thought Derrida's drivel was the very worst in
passive, weak pessimism. It's also all incredibly obvious to me, so my
general reaction is "So what?" I've read it a few times and each time
it reveals new layers of banality. Eco similarly, although at least
Derrida could keep things short while Eco thinks he's much more of a
peacock.
> >I think the avant-garde should *always* be fair game.
>
> Why? Its a very endangered species. If its game then you will see it
> soon becomes extinct.
If the avant-garde is so easily extinguishable, perhaps it should be
extinguished. I don't think people working in any sort of avant-garde
art should be exempt from critique--quite the contrary. Everyone knows
that pioneers get the arrows and settlers get the land. If one wants to
be such a pioneer, then one had best learn to expect it.
Should they be treated as Hindu Brahmin, simply because they call
themselves experimenters? Isn't that a cheap defense? I'd go the other
way: if they're going to call themselves experimenters and avant-garde
etc, then they need always to be at the top of their game; their work
needs to be even better than simply acceptable. Avant-garde work ought
to be extraordinary or not at all, if one presents it to a largely
skeptical audience.
> Again i see it quite the opposite - the general trend is to sneer at
> post-modernism as phoney intellectualism, that's the easy way out. I'd
> like to meet someone who finds it easy!
You know, it just dawned on me that you are on the other side of the
pond, where this may very well be the case. I assure you that the
situation in American universities and so-called intellectual life is
quite the contrary. Po-mo is the fashion, and if you aren't blathering
in po-mo fashion about third wave feminism and Lyotard's notions of
intelligence, then you aren't collegiate material.
> Now i'd be at odds with many supporters of po-mo, but its
> perfectly possible to move on on the basis of abuse -
I would agree with this, and I am free to abuse it regularly as I do.
> Well if we start to communicate we might hear things we don't like?
What's wrong with that? No one ever implied that music should be
"likeable," certainly not instantly. I spent years trying to understand
Webern before finally the clouds parted. Similarly with Samuel Beckett.
As far as likeable ideas, I don't particularly like the idea that all
humans are mortal either, but there it is. The question isn't
likeability, it's value.
> >Nope, no thank you. If that's the only alternative to Victorian
> >stiffness, then it's time for suicide. I happen to think there are far
> >greater, far more meaningful options, however.
>
> Care to share?
> Fine. You enjoy yourself - but again isn't that not what experimental
> music is about? If art and music as art is difficult - then enjoyment is
> lacking- at least at first.
Says who? You do a great disservice to people who enjoy, for instance,
puzzles. Things can be incredibly frustrating and nerve-wracking yet be
enjoyable nonetheless. At least, that's how I feel.
> The only thing here is Mahler's stupidity. It justifies any and
> everything, it wasnt that Schoenberg was from a younger generation which
> was the cause of the situation was it?
Not in toto. It was because "the younger generation" here represents a
challenge to Wagnerian orthodoxy--and what could be wrong with that?
You do poor Gus a disservice. I think he was a much more open-minded
person than you suspect. A good challenge to the rulers is a necessary
charge of life, I think.
> >So, let's be clear on this. This is what I think.
> >
> >1) No area of human art is exempt from experiment.
> >2) Experiment is its own reward, but only for the experimenter.
> >3) Value judgments and interpretations still will be, and must be made.
> >4) Music can be experimental and still suck.
> >5) Music can be popular and still be great.
> >6) Novelty is only novelty.
> >7) Innovation can go hand in hand with conservation--or not.
> >8) Genres need expansion and redefinition even more than the
> >avant-garde, because they lean closest to cliche at all times, and to
> >keep them vitally alive is more difficult.
> >9) Avant-garde is not necessarily experimental.
> >10) Experiments need firm foundations and clear hypotheses to test. The
> >foundation and hypothesis is often not obvious to outside observers.
> >11) More discussion, honest and lucid discussion, is always better than
> >silence.
> >12) Silence is often necessary, and is sometimes a result rather than a
> >cause.
>
> I wonder why it had to be 12? (i write this at the moment i realise zorn
> has finished - silence then something ... Mozart i think from a distant
> radio, buzz of computer - traffic noise - .....)
Well, from the 12 Disciples, of course ;)
Om shanti
rzzaj
> You knock entertainment quite wrongly, I think. It is for me
> entertaining to figure out exactly how many parts per million of oxalic
> acid were in that mystery solution, and equally entertaining for me to
> figure out after six laborious days how the hell Structures Ia was put
> together. Entertainment need not be passive absorption of unchallenging
> dreck.
& here's a reviewers definition of what the "entertainment value" may be in
experimental music:
"Sirius Intrigues is not a record I will find myself listening to much ever
again - it's more a record that you hear, appreciate the great degree of
creativity that went into making it, and then put it away for a very long
time" (the rest of this review is at:
http://www.leftoffthedial.com/Ernesto_2CD.htm, if you care to read it)...
Zzaj
James Whitehead
Experimental music borrows the idea of an "experiment" from science - of
having an unpredicted outcome - not a demonstration of a hypothesis - as
a musical hypothesis isn't a provable thing. A score determines the
outcome - the performance realises the score. In an experiment the
outcome is unknown - that's the point of the experiment. In some perhaps
all scientific experiments - the outcome produces new information.
Experimentalism is in music associated with new kinds of music - and
historically it was - and newness - new ground is associated with the
avant garde - those in the front of a practice or activity. Its feature
is that the artist does not know the outcome of the process, does not
intend a particular outcome - but intends a discovery of something new,
rather than working with a given orthodoxy. It may well be true that
"experimentalism" itself is no longer new - in which case its not longer
a viable rationale or procedure.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<bc...@scnnospam.org> writes
>In article <G4fWoBA2...@jliat.demon.co.uk>, James Whitehead
><jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>> >Apropos, I'd say that experimental music needn't always be associated
>> >with the novel. One can experiment with anything. That's the beauty of
>> >experiment to me. This in no way, of course, means that the experiment
>> >will be 1) successful; 2) comprehensible; 3) reproducible; 4) worthy.
>>
>> Then i just don't know in this case how you are going to define
>> experimental music.
>
>Ahh...okay. I am beginning to see something.
>
>Just as Peter Wollen talked about the two avant-gardes in film, I think
>the same thing might apply here to experimental music. Correct me or
>modify me as necessary, but it seems that you're concerned with:
>
>1) Experimental music that consistently innovates in internal concept
>and external form upon a Western classical/composed music foundation,
>in a laboratory fashion.
Well partly - as i have now posted a kind of definition - or move
towards - the idea of the outcome is unknown - in a non-trivial way -
one never knows the outcome of a performance - but the experimentalist
encourages this - and in some cases what is produced is "new".
Some of the avant -garde - in the 20th C used this method -
experimenting with new forms, ideas, materials etc. I notice the avant
garde being knocked yet again! From the same reactionary positions. "can
be pretty easily the last refuge of the talent less or
overly pretentious. " - non-arian etc etc. This is simply not true -
acquiring the ability to peel a grape or play a nose flute *is* i
maintain less difficult - that is less - than thinking - its the big
brain - guys not your fingers which differentiates us! What a blow the
drum machine was... It's the ability to "pretend" which accounts for
art - as opposed to any animal behaviour. (all this is fairly talent
less and contentious rambling on my part)
>
>
>> The abandonment by Reich -
>> and others of the experimentalism which produced its gonna rain,
>> pendulum music etc was a move back to "opera" in all its given
>> orthodoxy. It represents a failure of modernity and a return to an
>> orthodoxy which is a best "simple minded" - at its worse in bad taste.
>
>Oh, I don't know. What the hell is modernity, for instance? One of the
>many problems I have with "post-modernism" is that I have never
>believed any po-mo definition of "modernism," so maybe it's just my
>intellect fading. Or it might be that I think what's interesting about
>all these alleged definitions is that some are made merely to be
>functional, and others are made to be gospel, and I detest gospel.
Well to detest gospel is the hallmark of certain po-mo tendencies - the
modernist programme being seen as a search for *the truth* - of ...
life, music, the universe, and everything.
>
>You remember that Reich studied composition with Luciano Berio. Berio
>(bless him) was giving his students various assignments with tone rows,
>clusters, exotic orchestrations, etc., and he noticed Reich's
>discomfort with virtually all the atonal, timbric exercises. Berio
>pulled Reich aside and said, "You know, if you *want* to write tonal
>music, then *write* tonal music."
I also understand he studied philosophy... so his discomfort might be
with an assumption rather than a sound.
>
>I'd have to say I find very little of that sort of charitable attitude
>amongst self-proclaimed post-modernists (and that word! doesn't it
>immediately imply an eternal attachment to modernism, the very thing
>that it supposedly overthrows?)
No it cant 'overthrow' - as revolution is a modernist methodology...
french american russian etc ...
> If you have a go at Abigail
>Solomon-Godeau, or Allan Sekula, or Baudrillard, or Laura Mulvey among
>others, I think you will find a rather dogmatic insistence that the
>"other" ways of doing things are categorically and politically *wrong*.
>Now what could be more appalling than this sort of messianic attitude
>by a bunch of overprivileged white folks, and what makes it so
>different from the bogus notion of modernism with the capital-A ARTIST
>as hierophant and shaman?
I'm missing the point here as you seem to be fairly post modernist - a
reactionary in po-mo clothing.
>
>> That is using the holocaust as the basis for an opera reflecting on ones
>> own childhood - and pushing this out as entertainment. No need for me to
>> say i like or dislike this work - just explain - like 'the cave'
>> exploits real issues of life and death for entertainment - what next
>> from reich - the twin towers an opera or disney theme park ride.
>
>I'd say you're likelier to hear this from John Adams, certainly. e.g.
>The Death of Klinghoffer...
lets wait and see?
>
>> Yes i think so - as otherwise it engages in politics of say Nixon - now
>> is Nixon visiting China to be considered something of a musical event.
>> Even if it is - then the act itself was Nixon's, i've simply no idea
>> what Adams is doing? If we are using the word experiment we are i think
>> offering a parallelism with science - and does science seek more
>> abstract explanations - yes i think it does, and doesn't repeating old
>> experiments of the previous 200 years not much help the search for
>> greater abstraction of explanation.
>
>I would dissent. I don't think science necessarily seeks greater
>abstraction.
Ugh! "Science is the search for compression's of strings of data into
briefer encodings ('laws of nature') which contain the same information
... [a search for] the ultimate theory" J Barrow.
>I think the primary impulse of late 20th Century science,
>certainly has been a notable turn toward synthesis, rather than
>analysis.
Like the human genome project - or cobe experiments - no synthesis is
again a po-mo take on things.
>Not so much abstract theories of creation or existence
>(though surely these are present--like the Anthropic-Cosmological
>Principle, for instance) as more elegant explanations of singular
>phenomena as interlocking pieces of a larger design. The cosmic
>Watchmaker is definitely back. In fact, many of the recent experiments
>in science are revisions of Boltzmann's theory of entropy (1854) and
>Maxwell's ideas about "fields."
>
>But, this continues with what I think is your practical definition of
>experiment, certainly.
>
>> Obviously music has other issues,
>> like opera, like muzak, pop, folk whatever, but why the attack on the
>> avant garde - why the need to challenge the idea of boundary pushing.
>> The only reason i can find here is that you don't like it. Well i might
>> not like it either - it might be difficult, simple, or boring, but the
>> activity of experiment in science isn't i think done for entertainment
>> and so i'd assume similar in music.
>
>You knock entertainment quite wrongly, I think.
I'm not knocking entertainment at all.
>It is for me
>entertaining to figure out exactly how many parts per million of oxalic
>acid were in that mystery solution, and equally entertaining for me to
>figure out after six laborious days how the hell Structures Ia was put
>together. Entertainment need not be passive absorption of unchallenging
>dreck.
sure - but entertainment per-se as opposed to an investigation which may
or may not produce a significant or entertaining object/conclusion.
>
>> Well then you seem to imply that the art work only illustrates the
>> definition - but i think certainly in the case of experimentalism it is
>> the definition. The cave my be an exposition of themes - cultural and
>> religious histories of the middle east - a newsreel - what is its gonna
>> rain an exposition of - if anything of itself- an exposition of two tape
>> loops. Once you've found your definition you can settle for that - but
>> the tendency is to want to repeat the act of discovery - and you cant
>> discover the discovered. And the idea of a private language is
>> interesting as all discoveries which are new - at the point of discovery
>> are private.
>
>The revelation is private. The thing discovered is always what it
>always was,
why - there are big arguments re discover/create. Was tonal music
discovered - was the 1812 overture "discovered"
>and certainly always publicly accessible (provided there is
>access). It's not the acid, it's the trip, as McKenna might say. The
>trip is private, the acid is easily made in your kitchen sink (or so
>I've heard).
>
>Meanwhile, the definition is neither... The work of art is an instance
>from which definitions are made. Ned Rorem: "Do you honestly think when
>I sit down to write that I say to myself, 'Well, it looks like a good
>day to compose some Neo-Romantic music?'"
i've no idea.
>
>
>> Yes the context is altered eventually - Riley and Young seem to have
>> abandoned the context of orchestra - as well as others of course. There
>> maybe a conservative retreat back to the orthodoxy offered by the
>> orchestra - i dont know much of what Reich is up to these days - but a
>> symphony by players in DJs from him would not be a surprise. 'The
>> prodigal son' would be a good title.
>
>Heh. Why not?
yes - that's what i'm saying - why not? - which is not the same as "you
cant make music doing that..." ... "oh yes? well why not..."
>
>> >Well, there's another area entirely... Afro-Celtic schlock galls me.
>> >But there are interesting things in "world music" (remember, this is
>> >simply a marketer's term, and has nothing to do with reality). For
>> >instance, Portuguese bagpipe music, completely free of the Western
>> >tonal system, and in fact much closer to the sonic realm of Partch than
>> >to The Chieftains. Inuit lullabies indeed.
>>
>> And this is all good stuff no doubt - but what do we find in the section
>> next to 'world music' or 'TV themes' called "experimental". Anything?
>
>Well, "experimental" here is simply a marketing term, is it not? The
>truth would be that one must always go looking for "experimental."
>Anything called "experimental" by record stores is inherently
>suspicious. I recently found the OHM: Pioneers of Electronic Music
>compilation (featuring Ussachevsky, Spiegel, Lansky, MEV, et al) in the
>"Dance/Techno/Electronica" section. I leave it to you to gather the
>irony of that.
>
>> >How Zen of you. And I don't mean that in a good way. ;)
>>
>> Zen? - well there is a radio show of the stuff i sometimes listen to,
>> but that's not zen. Strange how you knock zen? a religion which arrived
>> at Japan via china from india - and now you see it inappropriate to
>> travelling further eastward to California.
>
>I'd say that there's a big jump in cultural difference between the Far
>East and the US.
Not more than from India to Japan i'd say...
> Being American myself, I'd say that virtually every
>"Eastern" idea I've seen enter into the American collective unconscious
>has been routinely corrupted, defiled, and prostituted.
That's life..
> What it
>generally strikes me as, is simply another aspect of Western
>appropriation--take the results without their ideas and claim them as
>novel approaches to your own ethical world. How very nauseous. I've met
>very few Buddhists here, for instance, who struck me as anything other
>than materialistic yuppies. So where's the revelation?
>
>Western Zen as I've encoutered it is most essentially Dadaism claiming
>a spiritual root. Barf.
Zen is much more associate with certain tendencies in modern - what was
modern america that the catholic hierarchy of rome - but things are
changing... we are either with you or against you now it seems.
>
>> >Pursuing novelty for its own sake--well, I've
>> >better things to do. I'd rather listen to something enjoyable or
>> >possibly even make something enjoyable. I don't mean this in the sense
>> >of Muzak, but simply in the sense of aiding and abetting my own
>> >emotional, intellectual, spiritual, social growth.
>>
>> That is Muzak - and i quite understand this is a post-modern phenomenon,
>> not wanting anymore "to boldly go".... but exploration like
>> experimentation produces new things - which may be ugly nihilistic and
>> dangerous to ones emotional intellectual spiritual and social growth -
>> - better to burn out than fade away -
>
>There is, I think, a big difference between discovering that the fire
>burns and knowingly throwing yourself into it. You show that trace of
>"modernism" there, the heroic searcher, the Ossian of Lord Byron and
>the rest of the Romantics. Myself, I'm not like other people. Pain
>hurts me. The question is whether or not it is the pain that makes me
>stronger or the needless suffering of man on earth. I don't court
>danger: my very life provides enough on its own.
>
>Now, if you somehow associate that idea of self-preservation with
>musical conservatism, well--that is up to you.
I do. Because essentially it says you'll play *any* tune that the pays
the piper.
>
>
>> Only needs to be done once - though it maybe in science as well as music
>> repeatable. The fetish for novelty however is just that - maybe an evil
>> addiction which has brought the world to a dangerous state. If you know
>> the film Matrix - which tablet would you take - the blue or red pill?
>> "you take the blue pill ... you wake up and believe whatever you want to
>> believe" - that's you're aesthetic and programme for music isn't it?
>
>Not having seen the Matrix, I couldn't say for sure. But since you ask,
>my aesthetic programme for music is pretty simple. As a composer, I
>think one should always compose what one wishes. If that be
>Neo-Romantic string serenades, go for it. If it be Symphony for 100
>Metronomes, sure. If it be subsonic wave transformations with shortwave
>squelch punctuations, let's hear it. If that's what a composer thinks
>carries an important idea that cannot be said any other way, all well
>and good.
But this is to say that music just illustrates - it isn't a source of
innovation, enlightenment, amusement or boredom - in itself.
>
>As a listener, I think one should listen to a diverse array of music:
>from Muzak to Elliott Sharp to Huun Huur-Tu to Weather Report to
>Babatunde Olatunji to Aesop Rock to Marty Robbins to Fela Kuti to
>Mohammed Reza Shajarian to Magma to Gesualdo to The Who to David
>Bedford to Yim Hok-Man to Evan Parker to Charles Mingus to Earth Wind &
>Fire and everywhere between. The ideal listener to me is one that has a
>vast experience with diverse musics, an unquenchable curiosity,
>inexhaustible patience, and an open mind. If after going through all
>the audible options one still prefers to listen to the Beatles, well so
>be it.
>
>I'm not a legislator of taste. There is plenty of music I dislike.
>There is even music I dislike to which I return often, till I feel like
>I understand it (Slipknot, for instance, or Erkki-Sven Tuur, or Michael
>Dougherty).
This appears to be a sensible enterprise... with which i do have
reservations.
>
>> But that doesn't account for the dynamic of western thought. Every day
>> is different, and you can do different things every day - but that's not
>> to engage in the process of discovery that is associated with modern
>> music AKA experimental music.
>
>Now you're on dangerous ground.
good!
> Modern music is a very problematical
>term that is even less defensible than experimental. I presume you mean
>music with a pioneering intent?
i mean modern music - in the past tense. Post-modern music - now that
can be neo- (fill in the blank)
>
>> Telling you how is the one thing that brother Jacques i think would not
>> tell you. I happen - at your prompting - to be listening to Cobra as i
>> write this - and what a sense of nostalgia it brings, its somehow very
>> comforting - very ... nice. And again at the risk of you getting me
>> wrong - i like it. Now Derrida i don't like - i find his writing hard -
>> it fucks up my head.. and like the idiot i am i'm drawn back to this - i
>> guess i want to misunderstand him also.
>
>Really? I always thought Derrida's drivel was the very worst in
>passive, weak pessimism. It's also all incredibly obvious to me, so my
>general reaction is "So what?" I've read it a few times and each time
>it reveals new layers of banality. Eco similarly, although at least
>Derrida could keep things short while Eco thinks he's much more of a
>peacock.
I think calling something drivel reminds me of sir thomas beetcham's
calling Stockhausen "shit"
>
>> >I think the avant-garde should *always* be fair game.
>>
>> Why? Its a very endangered species. If its game then you will see it
>> soon becomes extinct.
>
>If the avant-garde is so easily extinguishable, perhaps it should be
>extinguished. I don't think people working in any sort of avant-garde
>art should be exempt from critique--quite the contrary. Everyone knows
>that pioneers get the arrows and settlers get the land. If one wants to
>be such a pioneer, then one had best learn to expect it.
But its the fucking settlers who are firing the arrows from behind
that's a bit rich isn't it?
>
>Should they be treated as Hindu Brahmin,
yes - why not?
>simply because they call
>themselves experimenters? Isn't that a cheap defense? I'd go the other
>way: if they're going to call themselves experimenters and avant-garde
>etc, then they need always to be at the top of their game; their work
>needs to be even better than simply acceptable. Avant-garde work ought
>to be extraordinary or not at all, if one presents it to a largely
>skeptical audience.
"better" - but the audience judges...
>
>> Again i see it quite the opposite - the general trend is to sneer at
>> post-modernism as phoney intellectualism, that's the easy way out. I'd
>> like to meet someone who finds it easy!
>
>You know, it just dawned on me that you are on the other side of the
>pond, where this may very well be the case. I assure you that the
>situation in American universities and so-called intellectual life is
>quite the contrary. Po-mo is the fashion, and if you aren't blathering
>in po-mo fashion about third wave feminism and Lyotard's notions of
>intelligence, then you aren't collegiate material.
But isn't that ridiculed in the press - yes it might be that po-mo
thrives in universities - but isn't that where you'd expect to find
"ideas"
>
>
>> Now i'd be at odds with many supporters of po-mo, but its
>> perfectly possible to move on on the basis of abuse -
>
>I would agree with this, and I am free to abuse it regularly as I do.
>
>> Well if we start to communicate we might hear things we don't like?
>
>What's wrong with that? No one ever implied that music should be
>"likeable," certainly not instantly. I spent years trying to understand
>Webern before finally the clouds parted. Similarly with Samuel Beckett.
>As far as likeable ideas, I don't particularly like the idea that all
>humans are mortal either, but there it is. The question isn't
>likeability, it's value.
>
>> >Nope, no thank you. If that's the only alternative to Victorian
>> >stiffness, then it's time for suicide. I happen to think there are far
>> >greater, far more meaningful options, however.
>>
>> Care to share?
>
>> Fine. You enjoy yourself - but again isn't that not what experimental
>> music is about? If art and music as art is difficult - then enjoyment is
>> lacking- at least at first.
>
>Says who? You do a great disservice to people who enjoy, for instance,
>puzzles. Things can be incredibly frustrating and nerve-wracking yet be
>enjoyable nonetheless. At least, that's how I feel.
No i don't - again doing crosswords might be fun - i'm hopeless at them
- but that's not my point.
Oh - its a magic number - in music as well you know? :-)
--
James Whitehead
Om shanti
> >1) Experimental music that consistently innovates in internal concept
> >and external form upon a Western classical/composed music foundation,
> >in a laboratory fashion.
>
> Well partly - as i have now posted a kind of definition - or move
> towards - the idea of the outcome is unknown - in a non-trivial way -
> one never knows the outcome of a performance - but the experimentalist
> encourages this - and in some cases what is produced is "new".
> Some of the avant -garde - in the 20th C used this method -
> experimenting with new forms, ideas, materials etc. I notice the avant
> garde being knocked yet again! From the same reactionary positions. "can
> be pretty easily the last refuge of the talent less or
> overly pretentious. " - non-arian etc etc. This is simply not true -
> acquiring the ability to peel a grape or play a nose flute *is* i
> maintain less difficult - that is less - than thinking - its the big
> brain - guys not your fingers which differentiates us! What a blow the
> drum machine was... It's the ability to "pretend" which accounts for
> art - as opposed to any animal behaviour. (all this is fairly talent
> less and contentious rambling on my part)
You over-estimate "thinking." I am after all thinking when I learn to
peel a grape, just as I'm "thinking" when I compose a suite for Persian
indigenous instruments. The process is the same; what differs is the
level of categorial abstraction, and the degree of unity with sensuous
experience. (I stole this from Sir John Eccles, probably, or maybe
Gregory Bateson, or was it Aristotle--either will do).
> Well to detest gospel is the hallmark of certain po-mo tendencies - the
> modernist programme being seen as a search for *the truth* - of ...
> life, music, the universe, and everything.
Perhaps, but the issue is then "seen by whom"? And surely the urge to
profane the gospel far, far, far antedates this collection of metonymic
rambling called "po-mo". In fact that urge for "the One Truth" far
antedates modernism by at least 2500 years. This is the problem with
ascribing thoughts to "movements" or ideologies.
> > If you have a go at Abigail
> >Solomon-Godeau, or Allan Sekula, or Baudrillard, or Laura Mulvey among
> >others, I think you will find a rather dogmatic insistence that the
> >"other" ways of doing things are categorically and politically *wrong*.
> >Now what could be more appalling than this sort of messianic attitude
> >by a bunch of overprivileged white folks, and what makes it so
> >different from the bogus notion of modernism with the capital-A ARTIST
> >as hierophant and shaman?
>
> I'm missing the point here as you seem to be fairly post modernist - a
> reactionary in po-mo clothing.
Well, that's definitely the first time I've been called a reactionary.
I am amused by that notion. Anyway, I thought the point was clear, but
if you wish, I'll elaborate a bit.
No absolute meaning implies no privileged viewpoint, etc. The standard
post-structuralist statement. Okay, fine. If there's no privileged
viewpoint, and it's all "relative" (and this is truly bad science,
since "relativity" takes as its basis the idea that the laws of the
universe are *true* for *every single observer*--but then po-mo loves
bogus science), who is to say that modernism is "wrong," politically or
otherwise. The moral judgment here is equated with the semiotic
judgment of "meaning" (which I happen not to believe, by the way).
One truly nauseous trend of post-modernist (whatever people call that,
at least) writing is that the focus is no longer on the artist, or
indeed even on the artist's work. The focus is completely upon the
Critic. The Critic as Shaman. Now there's a laugh. Replacing one
hierophant with another hardly changes the religious essence; all the
old, "bad" structures remain firmly in place.
> sure - but entertainment per-se as opposed to an investigation which may
> or may not produce a significant or entertaining object/conclusion.
This is a difficult distinction, to say the least. From the listener's
point of view, there is only the result; the process is largely hidden,
even if the maker tells it aloud. Unless you're looking for another
sort of listener, the one that divines precisely what is being done at
every single moment within the timespan of a musical exploration. Even
so, I hardly think even such a listener would have no opinion or value
judgment about a piece of work.
> >The revelation is private. The thing discovered is always what it
> >always was,
>
> why - there are big arguments re discover/create. Was tonal music
> discovered - was the 1812 overture "discovered"
Tonal music was, I think, manufactured, just as was the 1812 overture.
These are products and not processes. Evidence of things unseen, as it
were; the forms of things unknown. The moment where Rameau struck his
keyboard and thought about the harmonic overtone series--that's the
discovery. The moment where Tchaikovsky realized he could be called a
serious composer if, when he didn't know what to write, he simply
scrawled out a series of descending and ascending chromatic
scales--that's the discovery. The overtones, and the chromatic series
are still what they always were: artifacts.
> yes - that's what i'm saying - why not? - which is not the same as "you
> cant make music doing that..." ... "oh yes? well why not..."
The very impetus of experiment, don't you think?
> >I'd say that there's a big jump in cultural difference between the Far
> >East and the US.
> Not more than from India to Japan i'd say...
Oh, I'd say there is, having been to all three. Despite India's
ruthless Anglicization, it remains quite a bit more similar to China
and Japan than the US... Besides, Zen is a Chinese form of Buddhism. It
is simply better known through its Japanese name.
> Zen is much more associate with certain tendencies in modern - what was
> modern america that the catholic hierarchy of rome - but things are
> changing... we are either with you or against you now it seems.
Sad but truthful, I fear.
> >Now, if you somehow associate that idea of self-preservation with
> >musical conservatism, well--that is up to you.
>
> I do. Because essentially it says you'll play *any* tune that the pays
> the piper.
Only if you think that you aren't your own piper, and that pay is at
all relevant (which I don't).
> But this is to say that music just illustrates - it isn't a source of
> innovation, enlightenment, amusement or boredom - in itself.
Okay. You're not bringing up the Thing in Itself argument, are you? I
do hope not.
At any rate, I'd say music does more than illustrate--or more
precisely, it does something else other than illustrate. Quite
obviously it *is* the source of innovation, enlightenment, amusement,
boredom or what-have-you, as much as literature or dance or making
French couronnes.
I don't think the relationship is quite so simple as mere illustration.
Innovation and boredom are abstractions, after all, and therefore
internal judgments by people--the music is simply the occasion for the
judgment. The physical, sensuous realm of music is another thing
entirely.
> I think calling something drivel reminds me of sir thomas beetcham's
> calling Stockhausen "shit"
"Have you scheduled any Stockhausen in your programmes?"
"No, but I almost stepped in some once."
Beecham was Beecham. He's entitled to his opinion of Stockhausen, of
course, just as I'm entitled to mine of Derrida and his cohort. Still,
it's my ethical judgment and I'm sticking to it.
> >If the avant-garde is so easily extinguishable, perhaps it should be
> >extinguished. I don't think people working in any sort of avant-garde
> >art should be exempt from critique--quite the contrary. Everyone knows
> >that pioneers get the arrows and settlers get the land. If one wants to
> >be such a pioneer, then one had best learn to expect it.
>
> But its the fucking settlers who are firing the arrows from behind
> that's a bit rich isn't it?
Such are the ironies of life, as you duly note above.
> >Should they be treated as Hindu Brahmin,
>
> yes - why not?
Because no one deserves a special status on the basis of a self-applied
label, no more for being "avant-garde" than for being "victims." I hate
that notion of social hierarchy. But then, I'm an American, where it's
all about economic hierarchy...
> >You know, it just dawned on me that you are on the other side of the
> >pond, where this may very well be the case. I assure you that the
> >situation in American universities and so-called intellectual life is
> >quite the contrary. Po-mo is the fashion, and if you aren't blathering
> >in po-mo fashion about third wave feminism and Lyotard's notions of
> >intelligence, then you aren't collegiate material.
>
> But isn't that ridiculed in the press - yes it might be that po-mo
> thrives in universities - but isn't that where you'd expect to find
> "ideas"
Oh no--I don't expect ideas at universities. I expect isolation
interrupted by regular bacchanalia.
> >> I wonder why it had to be 12? (i write this at the moment i realise zorn
> >> has finished - silence then something ... Mozart i think from a distant
> >> radio, buzz of computer - traffic noise - .....)
> >
> >Well, from the 12 Disciples, of course ;)
> >
> Oh - its a magic number - in music as well you know? :-)
Or course. You mean Western music, naturally.
Now you can compose a multimedia piece:
1) Each one of the twelve lines has a duration and a computer generated
subroutine assigned to it (the shorter the line in word length, the
greater the duration of its routines);
2) the first subroutine is based upon the addition of the number values
of the letters in each sentence, divided by the number values of the
prior sentence (the first sentence is divided by the twelfth sentence,
to make it circular, like a chambered nautilus);
3) In the second subroutine, each letter is assigned a note value from
the Karnatic scale of 24 notes (using the Roman alphabet where U=V and
I=J);
4) In the third subroutine the basis is from the tones of the first
iteration clustered with the second iteration;
5) The fourth subroutine is completely cinematic, and translates each
Karnatic tone into a frame of film projected at 24 frames per second;
the soundtrack of each frame is the tone from the first iteration;
6) The fifth subroutine is polyphonic, using the second subroutine with
a) cancrizans
b) major-minor translation
c) digital decay over 12 seconds
d) randomly selected songs from the Woody Guthrie catalog
e) improvised accompaniment on oboe with a phase delay of five
seconds
f) backward repetition;
7) The sixth subroutine is based upon the vocables of each word in the
third line, minus every third syllable;
8) The seventh subroutine is purely percussive, using interlocking
rhythms, wherein the speech rhythm is transferred to
a) tabla
b) snare drum
c) daf
d) tympani
e) O-daiko
f) conga
g) castanet
h) Linn drum machine;
9) The eighth subroutine is completely silent for as long as it takes
the composer to read each line, punctuated only by breath where
breathing would normally occur;
10) The ninth subroutine would use an 8-track tape player and a single
track tape deck, each playing The Beatles' "Revolution 9" slowly out of
phase;
11) The tenth subroutine would assign equal duration to each syllable
and would be read aloud by five readers to the tempo of ten metronomes;
12) The eleventh subroutine uses two separate LCD video projectors, the
first displaying the visual graph of subroutines I-IV, the second
displaying pictures of ESP cards, while the first would have the
soundtrack of a woman reading Commandment Nine from the Bible played
backwards at 1/64th its speed and the second would have excerpts from
Popol Vuh;
13) The twelfth subroutine amplifies the actual sound of the public
address speaker system in accordance with the volume values of an
amplifier that goes to 12, with each value assigned to a single word in
a "volume row" a la Messiaen;
14) These routines all run precisely twelve seconds from each other,
and are looped twelve times.
15) The routines may be chosen by being assigned to the keys on a
keyboard, and thus improvised upon in the course of any performance.
That should keep you busy for a day or two.
Yours,
Omar
James Whitehead
<bc...@scnnospam.org> writes
The process becomes mechanical - not analytical - like the ice skater -
and when they become conscious of what they are doing they fall over.
Learning an instrument is the process of preventing conscious control
over certain actions.
>
>> Well to detest gospel is the hallmark of certain po-mo tendencies - the
>> modernist programme being seen as a search for *the truth* - of ...
>> life, music, the universe, and everything.
>
>Perhaps, but the issue is then "seen by whom"? And surely the urge to
>profane the gospel far, far, far antedates this collection of metonymic
>rambling called "po-mo". In fact that urge for "the One Truth" far
>antedates modernism by at least 2500 years. This is the problem with
>ascribing thoughts to "movements" or ideologies.
A constant critique of po-mo is that its stupid rubbish - and then its
nothing new but merely states the obvious. Neither is bothered to engage
with what it might be - similar tactics are often employed - in art -
"its shocking a child of 5 could do it" - and in the next breath "well
there's nothing new really x did similar years ago..."
>
>> > If you have a go at Abigail
>> >Solomon-Godeau, or Allan Sekula, or Baudrillard, or Laura Mulvey among
>> >others, I think you will find a rather dogmatic insistence that the
>> >"other" ways of doing things are categorically and politically *wrong*.
>> >Now what could be more appalling than this sort of messianic attitude
>> >by a bunch of overprivileged white folks, and what makes it so
>> >different from the bogus notion of modernism with the capital-A ARTIST
>> >as hierophant and shaman?
>>
>> I'm missing the point here as you seem to be fairly post modernist - a
>> reactionary in po-mo clothing.
>
>Well, that's definitely the first time I've been called a reactionary.
>I am amused by that notion. Anyway, I thought the point was clear, but
>if you wish, I'll elaborate a bit.
>
>No absolute meaning implies no privileged viewpoint, etc.
> The standard
>post-structuralist statement. Okay, fine. If there's no privileged
>viewpoint, and it's all "relative" (and this is truly bad science,
>since "relativity" takes as its basis the idea that the laws of the
>universe are *true* for *every single observer*--but then po-mo loves
>bogus science), who is to say that modernism is "wrong," politically or
>otherwise. The moral judgment here is equated with the semiotic
>judgment of "meaning" (which I happen not to believe, by the way).
This may or may be found somewhere - but its not what is found say in
Derrida - but a second rate miss-reading.
>
>One truly nauseous trend of post-modernist (whatever people call that,
>at least) writing is that the focus is no longer on the artist, or
>indeed even on the artist's work. The focus is completely upon the
>Critic. The Critic as Shaman. Now there's a laugh. Replacing one
>hierophant with another hardly changes the religious essence; all the
>old, "bad" structures remain firmly in place.
To say the focus changes is one thing - but to attack a
misrepresentation is odd - at best.
>
>> sure - but entertainment per-se as opposed to an investigation which may
>> or may not produce a significant or entertaining object/conclusion.
>
>This is a difficult distinction, to say the least. From the listener's
>point of view, there is only the result; the process is largely hidden,
>even if the maker tells it aloud. Unless you're looking for another
>sort of listener, the one that divines precisely what is being done at
>every single moment within the timespan of a musical exploration. Even
>so, I hardly think even such a listener would have no opinion or value
>judgment about a piece of work.
No - but the idea of "communication" is not denied in po-mo but
questioned, and the idea of "idea" is replaced by a chain of events
linked together, the listener isn't as passive as the more classical
model supposes.
yes that's the quote!
>
>Beecham was Beecham. He's entitled to his opinion of Stockhausen, of
>course, just as I'm entitled to mine of Derrida and his cohort. Still,
>it's my ethical judgment and I'm sticking to it.
So be it. Stuck you will be.
>
>> >If the avant-garde is so easily extinguishable, perhaps it should be
>> >extinguished. I don't think people working in any sort of avant-garde
>> >art should be exempt from critique--quite the contrary. Everyone knows
>> >that pioneers get the arrows and settlers get the land. If one wants to
>> >be such a pioneer, then one had best learn to expect it.
>>
>> But its the fucking settlers who are firing the arrows from behind
>> that's a bit rich isn't it?
>
>Such are the ironies of life, as you duly note above.
Well no - its something quite different as it now completely undermines
the movement in any direction. Any positive criticism of avant-gardism
is misrepresented and cried down. Post modernity far from allowing
anything - attempts to move on - its not that the conservatives have
gone away - its those who think of themselves as not being reactionary -
who have joined in the rubbishing.
>
>> >Should they be treated as Hindu Brahmin,
>>
>> yes - why not?
>
>Because no one deserves a special status on the basis of a self-applied
>label, no more for being "avant-garde" than for being "victims." I hate
>that notion of social hierarchy. But then, I'm an American, where it's
>all about economic hierarchy...
Which is not particularly good therefore at producing any
experimentation. I quite like the idea of a society which responds
positively to self-applied labels - like inventor - scientist - artist -
and helps support those who would wish to do this.
>
>> >You know, it just dawned on me that you are on the other side of the
>> >pond, where this may very well be the case. I assure you that the
>> >situation in American universities and so-called intellectual life is
>> >quite the contrary. Po-mo is the fashion, and if you aren't blathering
>> >in po-mo fashion about third wave feminism and Lyotard's notions of
>> >intelligence, then you aren't collegiate material.
>>
>> But isn't that ridiculed in the press - yes it might be that po-mo
>> thrives in universities - but isn't that where you'd expect to find
>> "ideas"
>
>Oh no--I don't expect ideas at universities. I expect isolation
>interrupted by regular bacchanalia.
hummm.
i'm dumbstruck.
--
James Whitehead
Om shanti
<jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> i'm dumbstruck.
Well, thank you.
It dawns on me, Mr. Whitehead, that you're an idealist. That's a good
thing, because working in any area of experiment, you'll need to
preserve yourself by remembering that what you do is worthy.
I like to think of myself as a post-ironic optimist, so don't suppose
that I'm being sarcastic when I say what I say. I obviously do believe
in experiment, just as I believe in creativity. Neither good nor bad in
a moral sense, they simply are forces, tools with which to do--well,
something good, I hope. I certainly believe that an artist must choose
which parameters will apply to oneself and the area in which one will
"work." I also believe that those parameters are subject to change
without warning, and that audiences and critics will simply have to
deal with it, and it is for that reason I mistrust labels, self-applied
or not.
Like you, I'd certainly love to see an acceptance, of a sort, for
people who simply want to do something creative. They deserve
encouragement, certainly, but not uncritical acceptance simply because
they want it. Good for them--let's just hope it isn't the creativity of
a transglobal conspiracy or a monoculture in sheep's clothing. But,
again, being American and still fairly young, I tend toward a
skepticism that applies equally to all endeavors. That doesn't mean I
don't respect the endeavor; it simply means one has to prove its value
to me, or I have to intuit that value myself. I don't find it that
difficult, actually, as I'm a fairly open-minded individual--at least,
until someone starts talking about "freedom" or "culture" or "rights,"
then I am indeed hard to convince.
Just go to it. Make something. Talk about something. Discuss what
you're working on. Share the knowledge. Otherwise, why bother to create
at all?... As Camus put it (robbing the quote from Nietzsche, I think),
a philosopher should preach by example. And so should I. You can draw
the implication from here.
Someday when I have the chance, I'll tell you what I really think this
newsgroup is for. But right now, I'm going to celebrate another
rotation around the sun completed. Just keep adding thoughts to the
archives, and I'm sure something good will begin to happen.
Om shanti
Buster Mudd
a defined time-object whose materials, structuring, and relationships
are calculated and arranged in advance, but are more excited by the
prospect of outlining a situation in which sounds may occur, a process
of generating action (sounding or otherwise), a field delineated by
certain compositional 'rules'."
- Michael Nyman
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:<zCK72AAj...@jliat.demon.co.uk>...