[no subject]

>we are part of a fascinatic community on the cutting edge of musical
>creation. working in the very new electronic medium, we are surrounded by
>very new ideas about listening, aesthetics, social relationships,
>communication... 

I have some general comments precipitated by the above.

1. What is so cutting edge about microsound and lowercase sound? Why is it 
progressive?

2. How can the electronic medium be argued as very new?

3. All the listening, the aesthetics, social relationships, blah blah 
blah, are the same as they have been for decades, just in different 
guises. Just by saying a frying pan can be used as a musical instrument 
doesn't create a revolutionary chasm between then and now. The world was 
the same after Cage's 4'33" premiered. 

"progressive," and "cutting edge," oh and "revolutionary," are such buzz 
words. Western society is so consumed with forward thinking it gives me 
vertigo. My actions now will be justified by what happens in the 
future. I am part of a revolution. And other nonsense. I predict that no 
one can give an adequate definition of these terms because they have 
become meaningless. If I am doing physics
the furthest thing from my mind is whether a certain method is 
progressive. "Oh, taking that integral to infinity is cutting edge. That 
is too experimental." Another word that means shit to me now and forever 
more: "EXPERIMENTAL." (I do like the word "fascinatic" though ;-)

I am so sick of people, articles, and conferences, consumed with 
"cutting edge" crap that they don't see the real jewels that are created 
at the same time without electrosensors up the butt. But this is the way 
it has always been, a preoccupation with predicting and shaping the 
future. Trying to be the first to showcase the next big thing, to predict 
revolutions. I don't care if I was the first person to use Arizona Iced 
Tea cans to make music; it was never experimental, it was never meant 
to be progressive, or cutting edge, and god forbid revolutionary. I was 
trying to imitate classical Balinese music. (Many of you may have never 
known about these "experiments" with aluminum cans, so you might think I 
am a revolutionary creating bleeding edge music...like people at a pop 
show who see the drummer play his cymbal with a bow. Blessed and 
blissful are the ignorant.)

I am certainly not saying that nothing new has come since the Greeks. 
There have been many advances and revolutions in politics, science, 
art, and life as we know it. (I am not a card carrying Kuhnian though, but 
I hope the abuse of the word "paradigm" stops.) I am not saying 
microsound/lowercase is worthless, or is the next big thing ("MTVs Total 
Request Lowercase"). I cannot even speak for LCS because I had little 
knowledge of it six months ago, and I will not call myself an LCS 
practitioner.

The only thing I will predict is that these term abuses will 
continue. People are complex bundles learned behaviors who usually aren't 
aware of why they act the way they do. Part of the human spirit is to 
have control over destiny and be recognized for something valuable.
Along with this comes a need to justify your actions to others who don't 
understand. So many fall into this trap that few are able to produce any 
good work because energies are exhausted. Either you are educating or you 
are composing. Few are able to do both simultaneously.

So in conclusion, which is the section that justifies all that has come 
before, 

1. "Cutting edge," "revolutionary," "experimental," and "progressive," are 
now ghosts of meaning thanks to lexicographical abuse.

2. The electronic medium is hardly new. (This needs no validation.)

3. Ideas surrounding microsound/lowercase, and many other methodologies, 
are no different or newer than ideas that have been in place for decades. 
Listening to quiet sounds isn't different from listening to long gradaully 
changing sounds of minimalism, or music from indeterminacy. Making music 
with laptops isn't different from making music from splicing tape, 
which isn't different from making music with radios, which isn't 
different from making music with phonographs, the theremin, the telharmonium.

The rules of music, like the rules of science, change over hundreds of 
years. But intents and purposes remain the same. Otherwise it would have 
to be called something else experimental.

-Bob.

-- 
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