Re: [microsound] process mystique: sound vs music?

[Joshua Maremont <thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 05:35 PM 10/3/00 -0400, david turgeon wrote:
> i'm a bit iffed with this talk of "hiding the process"...  supposedly
> this would be an "intellectual property" issue, but isn't that absurd?

To me the word "mystique" hits the alarm button of this issue, where 
"hiding the process" serves as a tool for mystification.  There were for 
example stories from a friend of mine who played on a bill with a star of 
electronic music (who will go nameless here) and found that the star had 
draped a black tarp over his gear in order that no-one might discover its 
identity; the friend peeked, of course, and found a quite familiar array of 
equipment.  At the other end of the continuum was Atom Heart at his 
wonderful CCAC performance here in SF:  not only was his minimal setup of 
Akai MPC and mixer in plain view, but the MPC display was fed into a video 
projector, leaving no doubt as to the finer points of his live 
technique.  Interestingly enough, the demystification had the unexpected 
effect of focusing my attention away from the screen, as if the banality of 
parameter tweaking had little relation to the sublimity of the music 
issuing from the speakers, and for me it is the latter that is really the 
point of music in any listening context.  A performance by the now local SF 
erhu player Chen Jie-Bing for instance leaves no room for doubt as to the 
equipment and techniques by which the music is brought into the air, yet 
these physical manifestations seem almost accidental beside the profound 
beauty of the sound.  Here then, for me, is the "magic trick" of live 
music:  not in the details of this hardware of this software (the "hat" and 
"rabbit" mentioned earlier in this thread), but rather in the fact that - 
as in visual arts and cooking and sex and the various other pleasure of 
this earth - something astonishing and moving has arisen out of essentially 
mundane ingredients.  Then again I can understand why a musician might want 
to obscure the technical aspects of a performance in order to allow people 
to focus on sound rather than geeking out on gear, for otherwise the 
fetishists of the audience may not be able to restrain themselves.  But to 
return to Oval, whom I enjoy for sound rather than for theory or code, I 
detect little attempt at mystification in the nonpublication of the 
Skotodesk software, as this group has long been quite open about its 
methods (and quite successful nevertheless at transcending them); rather, I 
suspect that the business of marketing and supporting software is not as 
appealing to its coder as are the making of music and the appearances in 
clubs and museums.  I do not recall that guitargeek Tom Scholz (yes, of the 
dreaded group Boston) was ever chided for not publishing the schematics for 
his little guitar processors (he did begin to sell them later), so it seems 
strange that a nonopensource Oval should be even slightly troubling.

np - Freeform "Green Park" (fantastic!)

joshua maremont / thermal - mailto:thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
boxman studies label - http://www.boxmanstudies.com/