Re: [microsound] culture, aesthetics, books and musicology

[John von Seggern <johnvon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Just wanted to throw in my 2 cents:

I just finished an M.Phil. in Music at the University of Hong Kong, wrote my
thesis about the effects of the Internet on musicians' working processes. Kim
Cascone and this list got a mention at one point, I cited Kim's article from
Computer Music Journal.

I'm now in grad school here in LA, commuting between UC-Riverside and UCLA to work
with a few different people...I will be giving a paper next weekend about the
effects of the Internet on the development of electronic dance music in mainland
China, that will be at the SEMSCC 2002 ethnomusicology conference at Pomona
College next Saturday.

I am having a great time with my research on the Net, digital music, and techno,
but when I was looking for grad schools I couldn't find many places to do this
kind of work...fortunately I have found really interesting people to work with
here in SoCal.

John

--
John von Seggern
http://www.digitalcutuplounge.com


Julian Knowles wrote:

> At 1:32 PM +1100 7/2/02, I wrote:
> >  >
> >>  and don't bother too much unless you have trouble sleeping... Musicology as
> >>  it stands is a dusty old discipline still trying to grapple with post
> >>  notational musics... How many musicologists do you see at electronic music
> >>  gigs?
> >>
> >  > Answer= 0
>
> >  > Most musicologists don't listen to electronic music, let alone electronic
> >>  music from the past ten years. This is somewhat curious situation, given
>
> At 3:12 AM +0000 6/2/02, <brad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> replied:
>
> >
> >practice comes before theory...
>
> well how long do they need....? Is 60-70 years enough time? In which
> case we should be starting to see a raft of good critical work on
> early electronic music appearing in the major musicology journals.
> I've missed it so far..., but i'd love to be surprised - i honestly
> would.
>
> >i hardly think people understand the
> >full philsophical, artistic and cultural impact of a particular work of
> >their own.  while i don't have a problem with people who speak about the
> >philsophical and aesthetic influences and ideas in their work, i
> >traditionally let others evaluate and posit what might a more solid or
> >well formed conception of a work within a greater context.
>
> right, see below..
>
> golo foellmer <golo@xxxxxx> replied:
>
> >
> >i am sorry that i have to have to confess to be a musicologist.
> >so answer = 0 = wrong.
> >and in fact: i am not the only one, at least not in berlin, koeln, vienna...
> >
> >while i agree to the center of your comment: musicology doesn't come very
> >close to electronic musics. even electronic music from the academic branch
> >coming out of those really, really old, historical studios is mostly
> >discussed by the composers themselves, not by musicologists. which is
> >actually ok, because obviously they are the only ones to understand the
> >technology involved. musicologists usually don't take dsp-classes.
>
> haha... this is a good quote.. I think i should clarify what i meant
> by my rather dismissive comment. Firstly, I was referring to
> mainstream musicology, ie the departments that tend to be set up in
> conservatoria, university music schools etc.. whose research output
> is published through the major internationally refereed musicological
> journals. I was not referring to work published in journals like
> Leonardo Music Journal ,CMJ  or media/cultural studies journals and
> the like... Incidentally, the bulk of the existing writings and those
> that appear in journals like  CMJ/LMJ seem to be generated by
> practitioners/artists rather than by full time music
> critics/theorists and the articles more often than not are concerning
> the work of the writer... as opposed to being third party, arms
> length critical analyses (Kim's recent CMJ issue being an exception).
> For these reasons i don't really associate a journal like CMJ with
> the Musicology discipline. Its a computer music journal which to date
> has mostly been about technical reporting from composers rather than
> music criticism. If you look at the editorial boards, they are made
> up of composers who write occasionally (and mostly not very well
> IMHO).
>
> If you and your colleagues are doing this stuff, I'd love to read
> some of it.. if you have anything in english. I can read german, but
> always need a dictionary!! (which doesn't help with po-mo language,
> but hey..). OUt of interest, have any of the mainstream musicology
> journals supported your work by publishing it? Its ok having all
> these specialist people running around doing stuff, but until it is
> published in the mainstream, it will not impact on mainstream
> discourse about music making and the disjuncture between practice an
> theory will continue to be as wide as it is...
>
> >
> >but this branch is covered ok compared to non-academic electronic music.
> >people writing and talking about the latter mostly don't know too much about
> >how to dig into formal aspects of music, so they avoid it.
>
> right, because musicologists are ignoring it and cultural
> theorists/media studies people/art critics  are among the only ones
> who seem to be writing about it. I do think though that most
> musicologists (your self excepted) are not equipped to discuss this
> work as you say. There's not a lot of excuse for this in my view.
> Learning how to do good harmonic analyses of highly chromatic music
> takes a long time to learn , so assuming a musicologist needs to
> study/research to carry out their craft, why don't they start
> learning a little about the workings of electronic music...?
>
> I sense that fear is breeding this ignorance to a large degree.. and
> secondly that the entire paradigm for western musicology is founded
> on the conventional notation based matrix which fails dismally in
> relation to most music after 1945 (neo-tonal/serial works being the
> exception). Art and media critics are used to inventing their own
> linguistic and theoretical devices to deal with the materials at
> hand. This practice has not really occurred in musicology which still
> often attempts to use outmoded or irrelevant tools to examine
> contemporary musical practice. There is no language of the world of
> timbre and spatiality - this poses a few problems for electronic
> music criticism...
>
> Sorry if i appear too harsh, but i honestly believe the discipline
> needs a good kick up the pants.
>
> >  very often when
> >music is discussed, the whole talk is about who makes it, why it is made,
> >which social etc. circumstances influenced it and so on, garnished with some
> >descriptions of a sound layer or two. again, like in the academic branch,
> >the makers of this music seem to be the only ones to be able to discuss the
> >_music_. most other outcome is basically cultural sociology. that is fine,
> >but not enough. this world would be a better one if more musicologists took
> >dsp-classes!
>
> my thoughts exactly.... or it would be nice if they learned how to
> use some software even... there is a plcae for the sociological work
> in order to understand the condition of music making, but there seems
> to be a complete absence of work which deals with music at any
> vaguely empirical level.
>
> enough of this laziness...
>
> --
> +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
> j  u  l  i  a  n     k  n  o  w  l  e  s
> senior lecturer in music technology
> electronic arts co-ordinator
> school of contemporary arts (music), university of western sydney
> web: http://www.geocities.com/socialinterior
>
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