Re: [microsound] analog|digital or digilog?

[cramakrishnan@xxxxxxx]

Ian Guthrie Yeager writes:
> 
> On Thu, 28 Jun 2001, Joshua Maremont wrote:
> 
> > For a listener, however, the differences are in what is done 
> > creatively with the tools, whatever they happen to be.  Microsound - as I 
> > look at it - is an approach to sound; the enforcement of a PowerBook 
> > lifestyle can be left to Apple's advertising agency.
> 
> I couldn't agree more. Perhaps it could be said that the advent of digital
> recording allowed what many of us think as a "microsound aesthetic,"
> simply by virtue of lowering the _noise floor_ of home recordings enough
> to bring the minute structure of (quiet) sound into focus. 

That's a good definition of microsound (music that tries to bring the
small-scale structure and variations into focus).  But to me the
microsound aesthetic exists independently of digital recording
technology.

For example, Roscoe Mitchell, Evan Parker, Charlegmene Palestine,
Morton Feldman, Alvin Lucier all use repetition in order to draw
attention to the small scale variations in the music.  Roscoe Mitchell
even performed a concert where he circular breathed one note for the
entire duration of the concert, emphasising the involuntary embechure
fluctuations.

Mitchell, Parker, Palestine, and Feldman all have examples of
microsound made with unamplified acoustic instruments; as do Radu
Malfatti and Burkhard Stangl.

np: Sandy Bull - Fantasias

- sekhar

--
C. Ramakrishnan        cramakrishnan@xxxxxxx