Re: [microsound] max/msp determinism

["neeeiiiggghhh." <transmit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

hello,

> i don't know that the  brand of car you drive is _that_ important.

teehee, that's a funny comparison - ask a car nerd, and he/she will know 
the difference between the sound of a mazda and a porsche.

> max, pd, jmax, supercollider, reaktor, granulab, audiomulch whatever... 
> its more to do with the person at the wheel... (beyond a very basic level, 
> that is)

yes, but somebody else said something about how they are designed 
(interface, function) to facilitate certain methods or sounds as being 
easier to access than others.  for some reason, despite the proliferation 
of tools and methods, i'm still hearing a lot of the output of these 
programs to be digital granulation, digital noise, synthesised bell tones, 
or high frequency glitches and scratches.  does that say more about what 
music people are sharing with me?  possibly it does.  but i'm still a 
little disappointed.

> but max/msp does not sound like anything, just as a toolkit does not 
> presuppose what will be built. besides, all those vst plug-ins will run in 
> the new msp... ;) so how will you tell what someone is running without 
> looking at their screen? i'd venture to say that what people run is pretty 
> unimportant by and large. What's more important is their maneovering 
> within the environment.
>
> I think what you mean is people using other people's _patches_ instead of 
> making their own

obviously personal usage of an environment is instrumental, if you'll 
pardon the horrific pun, but maybe it's not the patches as much as the 
underlying aesthetic which drives people to create similar sounds.

is the microsound aesthetic political, at least anything beyond the "trash 
is treasure" implication of the foregrounding of glitch/"mistake"/noise, or 
the references to computerised rigidity and standardisation?  can 
microsound be political; not so much in pure intent and conception, but 
overtly and as unmistakably as something like the ex (NL, post-punk)?


> that said, two people playing the same patch can still sound completely 
> different, which is why computers are musical instruments. an artist's 
> musical decisions are as important as anything else and have a profound 
> effect on the sonic outcome, unless of course the patch is almost entirely 
> algorithmic with little opportunity for human intervention.

i don't doubt the musicality of computer music.  sometimes minimal human 
intervention is good, diminishing also ego, although this highly depends on 
who created the process and wishes to claim authority over it.  yet another 
highly debatable consideration!

> you are running a modernist argument... ie music must be original/new to 
> be of any value. i don't really subscribe to this. a lot of excellent work 
> pays debt to the music that precedes and surrounds it. music is a 
> conversation and sometimes people agree. 'convention' or stylistic 
> commonality doesn't exclude good music. that said, an important ingredient 
> for good music is often a liberal dose of the artist's personality, or at 
> least a foregrounding of their interests as part of a comversation with 
> others that share them. i am very wary of the 'originality' argument, as i 
> really can't think of any music i would call truly original. music doesn't 
> seem to work like that, because it is a cultural product. you can't make 
> music outside of the culture you inhabit, and i'm not sure it would be 
> worth the trouble or make the music any better

of course i don't agree that "music must be original/new to be of any 
value."  but i think in the context of an oeuvre of works loosely 
umbrella'd as "microsound", this music operates under the context/tradition 
of "experimental" - whether that's experimental electronica, noise, sound 
art, programming.  i have no doubts, qualms or illusions about the 
socio-cultural conditions of "artistic creation", nor of stylistic 
cohesion/commonality, but i can't help the nagging suspicion that sometimes 
people are just aping each other.  maybe this is just humans... it already 
happens in all other kinds of music, including experimental rock, so maybe 
there's no point in complaining about this after all.  anyway, the real 
innovation i'm appreciating from microsound lately is coming as much from 
the context as from the sound - case in point, garth paine's "reeds" 
installation in melbourne, australia.

manys@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>> not at all - its good to talk about music
>Is *that* what this thread is about? I thought you guys were talking 
about tools.

tools and how they change the music.  stairway to heaven would have sounded 
different with an accordion instead of a guitar.  pretty funny, 
even.  imagine the accordion store nerds.

take care,
jon.



dust vs stars >> http://home.pacific.net.au/~transmit