Re: [microsound] |-| Re: // techniques ]]

[Michal Seta <mis@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Donald Mennerich wrote:

> on 1/10/01 4:13 PM, wrong john silver at wrongjohn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> > Indeed how did anyone ever make new music before the
> > age of the phonograph and radio!!!
>
> - you copied scores out,  and learned to sing all the parts.

And then you made varaitions on it.


wrong john silver wrote:

>
>
> ..though I probably came from the same camp as you I don't agree that its always a
> benefit or given to study so-called traditional music so you can know what rules
> you are breaking...that can be academic game playing: here's a rule, I'll overtly
> break it in some contrived way, now it becomes a new accepted way to be
> 'experimental'... Evolution mostly innovates through random mutation than in the
> course of a 'well-thought out experiment.' ...even science itself shifts mostly
> because of total outsiders to the system.

I simply underlined the usefullness of being aware of theory, history and whatever
else might apply.  However, I do not believe that only the knowledge of theory should
be the basis of your exploartions.  I don't think that theory only will give
interesting results although I do LIKE music of Webern who followed to the letter the
rigorous rules of serialism.  On the other hand Boulez gives me a headache (with a
few exceptions).


> While I did want to understand the
> structure of Mahler's 2nd Symphony or even some Messiaen suite it was as important
> to take on Bartok as folk song and Xenakis as nihilistic math theory. Its as easy
> to overanalyze a Beatles tune or transcribe a Hendrix track to what fucking end
> but feel like you understand it and now can create the same thing yourself...this
> is a lie. In fact learning the trade, the 'rules' and mimicking styles only
> someday to make some slight variation of it is a waste of everyone's
> earspace...

Actually, I refused to transcribe any guitar solos/tricks/licks in the past for fear
of becoming like many other guitarists that sound like Hendrix,Blackmore, Vai, you
name it.  However, often I found myself reinventing the wheel.  When I thought I
found some interesting phrase/lick/technique I'd discover a little later that someone
else did it some 20 years before.  I'm not sure what's a waste of time.

Unfortunately in a lot of music considered "experimental" I don't hear anything new,
progressive.  Call it mutation or evolution.  However, if it's at least musical
(whatever that means) i will sit through it and eventually enjoy it.

>  All the technique, training and analysis you
> could ever do can never give you anything to say and maybe even less because your
> music would be about that.....Indeed how did anyone ever make new music before the
> age of the phonograph and radio!!!
>

On the other hand all the technique, training and analysis will provide you with
technical and intellectual ability to turn all that you want to express into music.
Or, if you want to do abstract music with no expression you gain the same.  But I do
agree that ONLY those elements alone are worth nothing.  In fact, I think that if one
wants to make some meanningful art Iwhatever that is) one should not only know the
tools of the trade and have some talent.  One should be aware of his/her cultural,
historical and perhaps spiritual bagage.  The more one knows about just anything the
richer the expression will be.  And this applies not only to an artistic expression
but any statement one will have to do at a given time.

And if you think about it, this applies to all the music you can think of.  Not only
"experimental" or academic or whatever...  You wanna do blues, you have to know how
this music came to life and you need to learn the idiom.  And then you have to "feel"
it.  But you will never feel it without the historical background and without an
attentive listenning to hundreds of renditions of the same standards and such. Same
applies to Jazz but ina different way, same to pop.  Wanna be a pop star?  You have
to study all the tricks that make songs sell.  Actually, you don't have to.
Producers and sound engineers already have this knowledge so if you get out of their
way they'll make it sound just right.

I know that the above paragraph is an oversimplification of things but I don't want
to waste anymore bandwidth.  So please don't flame me for this simplistic vision of
pop or other genre you prefer.

One more think, though, that is interesting to think about.  I  don't really agree
(not totally at least) with what follows but I do think that it's a good idea to
think about it for a while.

Boethius (480-524) [note: before anything remotely resembling a phonograph was
invented] he wrote that there were three classes of "those who are engaged in musical
art. Those who perform on instruments, those who compose songs, "and the third of
those who judge instrumental performance and song."

"But those of the class which is dependent upon instrumentsand who spend teir entire
effort there-[...]- are excluded from comprehension of musical knowledge, since, as
was said, they act as slaves.  None of them makes use of reason; rather, they are
totally lacking in thought.
    The second class of those practicing music is that of the poets, a class led to
song not so much by thought and reason as by certain natural instinct.  For this
reason this class, too, is separated from music.
    The third class is that which acquires the ability for judging, so that it can
carefully weigh rhythms and melodies and the composition as whole.  This class, since
it is totally grounded in reason and thought, will rightly be esteemed as musical.
That person is a musician who exhibits the faculty of forming judgments according to
speculation or reason relative and appropriate to music concerning modes and rhythms,
the genera of songs, consonances, and all the things which are to be explained
subsequenty, as well as concerning the songs of the poets."

and a little earlier he says:  "From all these accounts it appears beyond doubt that
music is so naturally united with us that we cannot be free from it even if we so
desired.  For this reason the power of the intellect ought to be summoned, so that
thi art, innate through nature, may also be mastered, comprehended through
knowledge.  For just as in seeing it does not suffice for the learned to perceive
colors and forms without also searching out thier properties, so it does not suffice
for musicians to find pleasure in melodies without also coming to know how they are
structured internally by means of ratio of pitches."

For those who would like to read more and don't consider a little philosophy
harmfull, it comes from "Fundamentals of Music" by Boethius translated by Calvin M.
Bower, Yale University Press New Haven & London, 1989.


ohmygod.  sorry for the kilobytes.  My fingers are hurting...

MiS