mutek 2002/ re: [microsound] Further (rambling)

[stephan mathieu <sssst@xxxxxxxxxx>]

hi
i just came back from montreal last night, spent a whole week there and my facial muscles still need to relax from the constant smile i've been wearing there.

mutek 2002 was truely a great festival, in a great city full of very kind people. the whole thing was so well organised, for me as a performer everything was running more than smooth and also the shows were packed with people. and the technical equipment /pa systems - what can i say? i was very happy with all that. even the weather was a perfect mixture of cosey sunny warmth and a cooling rain every once in a while* also in the end it was so good to finally meet up with some people which i only knew from emails.
about the performances i can say very little i'm afraid, i'm still digesting as it was a vast input for me. still on my mind is ricardo villalobos' performance from last saturday at metropolis. i enjoyed his playfullness, sound and melodies very much and also atoms set on sunday evening was very good. on the more abstract side of things there was surely janek schaefers set and agf who played long but never lost track and went on and on with her music that was like a great movie to my ears. and there was a lot more good stuff being performed.

ok, now flipping through my emails i find my first concert discussed in this little tread and i'd like to say some words regarding rules and counterpoints, quoting guillaume grenier -

---
> Stephan Mathieu's set started in a strange way that once again seemed to
> destabilize the crowd, establishing a strong contrast with what preceded. It
> was as if people weren't sure that the set had really begun. But sure
> enough, his PowerBook was emitting noises. It was glitch music, shifting
> nervously from one state to another similar, but new state.

this was a medley of my frequencyLib album played with the lobster quadrille.
i thought of this part as a short intro like i know it from antique greek music. a way of  saying  "hi, i'm here".

ok, it wasnt that short.

> Next was a long choral-ish tune bathing in F minor/A flat major. The only
> sounds used had an organ quality to them -- or, more precisely, some sort of
> mini-organ.

the piece i used as a source was a part of händels A minor sonata for violin and harpsichord, the original piece and its reversed version played through a patch by david stevens.
i made this recording some days ago here at the local university for music with silke dawo on violin and franz simmer on harpsichord.
in fact i think its pretty unimportant which source i used, at the moment i'm simply working with this baroque stuff for a specific event and i really enjoy doing so. and every once in a while i speak about what i'm doing so thats why händel became a suject after my concert.

> At first, I thought this was cool. There was a nostalgic
> atmosphere to the music due to all the suspensions (I think that's the word
> in English -- we say "retards" in French) taking some time to resolve on
> tonic chords. There were several simultaneous voices, moving in a somewhat
> independent manner -- "Wow, some counterpoint!", I told myself, surprised.

i never knew what a counterpoint is and honestly i never wanted to know, even more i avoided to learn a lot of things because i believe very much in a development coming from ones self, making your own rules or more finding your own way of doing, seeing, expiriencing things. this is something i'm trying to shelter. also, in general i dont think about breaking rules.

> So, what have we got here: some pleasant floating tones moving timidly...
> and that's pretty much it. It's nice enough at the beginning, but I think
> the musical ideas contained in the piece were not able to sustain its
> length.

since a while i'm so full of ideas that i try to focus on only one of them instead of mixing them all too much.

> ... There seemed to be clear
> recurring patterns -- a C note growing to a high intensity, certain chord
> sequences -- but I didn't perceive any sense of direction. I missed that
> sorely. It rendered the music too static, I feel.

ok, i'm definetely a lot into static

> Another piece followed, of which frankly I don't remember much. Is this
> attributable to my quickly fading memory or to the piece itself? Place your
> bets... It was much less tonal than the previous piece. A series of
> disjointed tones. I remember thinking that the tones and the way in which
> they were linked (actually, they weren't and that's the problem -- it was
> more an indifferent series) seemed "careless". I also felt it suffered from
> a lack of direction, as with the choral piece before. That's about all I can
> summon from my memory.

mm, we seem to live on different planets indeed ... i'd like to think of that one as my most straight piece so far ... and it was a loop ... repeated 4 times ...
if you want to check (or analyse*) it go to -

http://www.bitsteam.de/littlepismoslullaby(loop).mp3

> Reaction from the crowd was again good, though maybe not as uniform as for
> Ghislain; IOW, some individuals seemed to enjoy the set highly while others
> appeared less enthralled.

imagine a world where everybody loves what you are doing (this must be michael jacksons house !?!). i think the audience was incredible. obviously i somehow felt like marlene dietrich at the olympia.

> My position is that
> when a musician does music where the harmonic parameter occupies a
> significant function, especially in a tonal realm, he ought to know the
> resources/limitations of this material. I don't mind if he disregards
> canonical practice of some epoch or another. But it *really* shows when a
> musician is working with this parameter in a completely clueless way.

now this parameter is completely strange to me.

....
> Janek Schaefer
....
> MAJOR FUCKING TALENT ALERT!!!
....
> Totally mind-blowing, my-head-exploding music-making.

i agree, janeks set was very good (you've missed the visuals, guillaume).
but take a look at this guy - he even wears a crown hairdo*

and -

> The crowd appreciated it a lot too, it seemed. As for me, I thought it was
> so good as to be a bit ridiculous considering the other stuff happening at
> the show before. IMO [but I already said that earlier... :)], he so totally
> dwarfed the other participants of the evening, it's not even funny... I even
> felt uncomfortable for them...

now you are very, very cute*
 - stephan