Re: [microsound] -oval and mainstream ears

[Mike Taylor <Chrome3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

hello,

another thing to remember is that people have become more accustomed to
the sound of skipping CD players and glitchy computer audio streams. I
know that I used to hate the sound of cd skips, but now it has the same
neutral feeling as pops on vinyl. The other thing you should do is play
them some really untuneful, nasty sounding glitch music. 
I bet they would become much less accepting on your musical selections. 

Diskont isn't a real musical advancement, not in the same way that 20th
century atonal music was a ***Musical*** advancement. Diskont sounds
nice because the theory behind why some interval relationships sound
good together still holds true. In other words, Diskont doesn't offend
people because it is more or less in key. 

What Diskont is doing is just taking plunderphonic/musique concrete
production techniques and applying them to digital audio. Conceptually
Diskont/Microsound is a rehashing of what has already been happening for
at least the last 50 years. It really is not anything new or advanced.
Anybody who wrote a piece of piano music for multiple players at
different tempos is doing the same thing as Diskont. 

I would bet that something like ionization or deserts by Edgard Varese,
which actually is ***musically*** forward compared Diskont would get a
much less favorable reaction. Diskont relies on normal harmonic
relationships, and that why it sounds pretty. Varese was ignoring these
nice sounding relationships, and coming up with something dissonant,
uncomfortable, and in a sense new. 

The production was something new, but it was not that far out of an
idea. You can do just about anything(if it is in key) and people will
like it. The more I know about theory the more I realize everything has
already been said, and it is just about tweaking the same thing out and
calling it your own. Diskont could have been done on pianos, in fact it
was done decades ago by people with pianos. 

its all the same, just give me a Cmaj7th and I'm happy
mike 


caleb~k wrote:
> 
> i played some first year digital media students oval...1994 and the new one.
>       most said they quite liked it...found it listenable and even
> nice...esp the old stuff...<
>          >>none of them had ever heard it
> 
> now that was a head spin for me as i remember being shocked in '94
> when it came out..
>        .i used to listen to a lot of ambient music and here was ambient
> with the high snaps of the cd glitch ringing thru.   it hurt and
> confused my head...like a review by paul schutze in the wire said at
> the time
> 
> "Oval have done something subtly violent to Electronica. Once you
> have heard this, things sound different?"
> 
> now the kids find nothing hard to hear in the sound...even when i
> played it really loud and got lots of complaints from the surrounding
> classes..<<
> 
> .kk

-- 
 Michael Taylor : Chrome3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx