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

[Tobias <tobias@xxxxxxxxx>]

> > - you copied scores out,  and learned to sing all the parts.
>
> how did non-western cultures survive musically, then? eg: traditional sufi
> music/ragas which were not recorded on paper until the 19th century (and
> which can still only be approximated by notation).
>
> certainly the information was transmitted, but was it analyzed? no. there
> was no system with which it could be analyzed.

Hi Jonah,

You've got to rethink what you might
mean by "analysis." The music was
most certainly analysed, passed down
from generation to generation through
systems of signification that although
may be "mysterious" or frustrating to
us are utterly sensible to those involved--
and again "sensible" here is a weak
misnomer.

Current-other-example: Native land claims
in BC that rely on oral histories. The Courts
are finally realising how accurate these
oral histories are-- going back hundreds, if
not over a thousand years. They are mainly
"kept" in story-song form, signified through
beads, totems, certain memory traces,
systems of "writing" entirely different from
the Western tradition.

Music is a system of signification, and as
such, analysis is inherently within the
system as necessary difference between
elements...

An "external" system is not necessary--
indeed what could even ever be external?

Things here could get more interesting
if we consider how one tries to "analyse"
in the Western sense a system of music-
signification that through its differences
has elements that seem to be un-notational--
perhaps we can call this unspeakable, a gap, etc.
The leap here is considering these non-notational
aspects as inherent to the system we employ
for the analysis also.

I wonder if it would be possible to write
within a patch (here my expertise is lacking,
I am not a programmer) a system of algorithms
with random elements that sequence linear time
based developments of an original musical
sound that would then literally be generationalized,
passed down, without losing what we could
consider a "core" element. Is it possible to
metaphorise within such a constraining system
of signification that is code? & as such what
will we accept as metaphor, meaningful substitution,
for musical core elements?

I think Wagner may have been doing something similar.
Anyone here a Wagnerian?

Some thoughts.

cheers,

t

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