Re: [microsound] Cutting edge???

["aya::karpinska" <awake@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> 1. What is so cutting edge about microsound and lowercase sound?
>

hmm...good objections...
so "cutting edge" was a poor term.
many find it too easy to leap from "new" to "better"


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

to me,  the past 100 years or so can also be "new". recording and
reproduction are new tools to use for composition. call-and-response can be
thought of as a form of recording, a sung canon is like a loop, however i
feel there is s-thing diff. about recording onto a physical material.
microphones are an interesting case, as well. of course amplification
techniques have long existed, from learning how to project the voice to
building large cathedrals for music to expand in. and perhaps it's been
imagined by thousands of others before thousands of years ago, but sticking
a contact mic to a cactus and strumming the spikes to generate input for
Max/MSP is possible *now*  and generates a new reponse from me, the
listener. but now i seem to be saying that only tools change, and musical
ideas or content doesn't. and that's not right, so i'll think on that some
more.

> 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.
>

decades, yes, but i really was thinking on a scale of a few centuries...i
certainly don't think social relationships or aesthetics have drastically,
globally shifted in the past 5 years. sometimes i naively expect them to - i
was pretty annoyed to see "where are the women on the list?". but i am also
wary of declaring that contemporary attitudes towards female musicians are
"better" or more "progressive" than they were in the vague past.


> "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.

but what do you think of making musical genres/categories in general? is it
useful, have we become overly fragmented and nit-picky about style?

>
> The rules of music, like the rules of science, change over hundreds of
> years.

this is the scale i was thinking on but it didn't come across. i agree with
you.