Re: [microsound] failure

[Joshua <thermal@xxxxxxxxx>]

>>>
kim brought up a great point in his last post.... what, in this kind
of microscopi music, constitutes failure? a bad track..?
what separates brilliance from obvious dsp noodling?
>>>

As DSP/Digi-[whatever]-music (shall we call it "d-music" to distinguish it
from what Klaus Schulze named "e-music?") sheds the diapers of its
infancy, I suspect the coming answer to such a question will offer its own
revisionist recontextualization (argh, sorry for the polysyllabia) of what
we have now upon our sonic plates.  In digi-video, for example, we are now
quite accustomed to that unfortunate creative disorder perhaps to be named
Plug-in of the Month Syndrome (PMS?), wherein the tweaking of a well-coded
application replaces that mystical creation ex nihilo toward which we hope
our aesthetic endeavors at least occasionally tend.  Certainly an
analogous (sorry...) phenomenon offered itself in the retro-analogical
synth gestures of perhaps five years ago, at which time many tracks of the
"check out my Arp 2600 for 20 minutes while I turn a knob I forgot to wire
up" variety were turning up to remind us of just how tedious oscillators
can become; the category of what I called Gear List Music comes
unpleasantly to mind.  In D-Music we are faced with an amazing array of
truly astounding toys, and after people have become accustomed to the soon
no longer novel sounds of these actual and virtual devices, we will begin
to focus less upon the method of a sound's creation and more upon its
engagingness, its musicality, its connotative depth, and its compositional
appropriateness.  For beyond the esoteric/otaku level of musical analysis
("But, you don't realize how rare the plasma tubes in this guy's D/A
converters are - especially coming out of a 64-bit Linux box!") what makes
music continue to matter is rather simple and, I think, quite beyond
technical considerations:  does it work?  does it make me feel something?
(or does it make me feel Nothing interestingly?)  does it continue to grow
with further listenings?  (or does its stasis of listening reactions make
it a place to which one likes to return?)  does it take one flowingly
along a course?  (or is its lack of movement reinforcing of a verticality
requiring an expanse of time in which to explore?)  does it work one year
later or five?  is it something the musician continually reaches for in
home listening contexts?  does it make sense without an elaborate
textual explanation or justification?  These are of course my criteria for
a good piece of music, and it may be noticed that I have omitted any
intellectual or methodological aspects from the list.  A head-scratcher,
after all, can be rewarding on a first listen, but after three or four
rounds there is blood on the fingernails, getting in the way of a tidy
rereading of those liner notes...

np - Eardrum "Last Light"

Joshua / Thermal / Boxman [Hako Otoko] label
mailto:thermal@xxxxxxxxx
http://www.wenet.net/~thermal/

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