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Re: [microsound] What is Microsound?



> > Although I am tempted to answer instead:  none.  The best understanding of
> > music is one's own, derived from the personalized experiences of listening
> > and, perhaps, of creating.

inversion will get you nowhere. the best way of listening to music is
exactly how you want to. if that means reading books at the same time, so
be it.

> Deleuze's "Thousand Plateaux's" is commonly (over)(mis)quoted... but i guess
> to me at least, it seems fairly abstract and could be applied to sound-art
> loosely.

there is more of value from the standpoint of understanding music in a
single chapter of "the logic of sense" than in all of "a thousand
plateaus." d&g's explicit writings on music are fairly conservative, as
tends to be the case among academics.

> also people have mentioned Atalli's "Noise: The Political Economy of Music"
> (or whatever the title is)... is this worth reading?

this is a post-marxist attempt to theorize music as a sort of
socio-economic barometer. as such, it tends to subsume all of its
observations under the broader marxist critique of the culture of
capitalism. i thought it was an interesting read, but not very insightful
about music per se.

apart from "the logic of sense" and bits and pieces of things like barthes
"the pleasure of the text," hal foster's "the return of the real," and
xenakis' thesis defense, the only book i've found very useful in
understanding computer music is joel chadabe's "electric
sound." absolutely essential. "any sound you can imagine" by paul theberge
is also good, although it's more history-of-technology oriented.

sc