Re: [microsound] The 'quest for newness'...

[david turgeon <david.t@xxxxxxxx>]

> Be sarcastic is you must but I am very serious about this.
> I suppose you can find some way of justifying that everyone out there is
> producing top notch well thought out electronic music?  Or should we toss
> all of our differences in opinion up to relativism  or individual "taste"?
> Maybe the point about kids diddling in their powerbooks was a bit overly
> dramatic but I am concerned that the overuse of the term avante garde dulls
> it's impact.

i was actually as dead serious as i was sarcastic; in a sense, i think
we agree, but your comment is vague & could be misunderstood to mean the
contrary of what i think it means.

i don't think everyone is putting the same amount of effort in their
music, but then again ~ sometimes, a passing mistake sounds better than
a life's work so go figure.  may i remind you that taste can both be
shared & disagreed upon, & that "good" music is a metaphysical concept,
true to only one person?

the only way we can describe music is through genres (which are simply
descriptions of musical language) ~ but everytime someone puts a
boundary to "what this genre is (or should be)", there's someone to
challenge it.  we could say "so why bother?" but maybe this is in fact
the dynamic of the avant-garde: to constrain & then to free.  in the
meantime, perhaps a few misguided souls mistake "avant-garde" for a
genre whereas it is a method; this would dull its impact much more than
"overusing" it.  the problem is "overmeaning" ~ i.e. making a word mean
too much.  but no one ever thinks about inventing new words for genres,
& when they do (say, "clickhouse") they are pointed at for constraining
the meaning;  but if you can't constrain, then how can you free?  how
can you make avant-garde clickhouse if you're not allowed to call it
clickhouse?

~ david