Re: [microsound] good instruments vs good music

[Soren Goodman <soren-microsound@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Ok, at this point we need to step back a bit.  It seems more like the
question here is "what makes a good instrument?".

The first things that pop into my mind are 

sounds good
easy to use

Of course these are highly subjective terms.  Sounds good for what?
Easy to do what with--make music?  What kind of music?

The piano was designed because the harpsicord was too quite...it was
designed to play the style of music that existed at the time louder.  It
was also created because harsicordists complained that they couldn't
change the volume during a performance -- near it's end, there were
harpsicords with a pedal that would control the opening of the lid, so
as to give some semblance of volume control -- the piano was a great
solution to all of these problems.  The first piano music wasn't written
for the piano, it was written for the harpsicord.  Or the organ.

Actually, correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the first pianoforte's
pretty quit as well?  The harpsicord is actually a pretty loud, sharp
instrument -- they played over entire orchestras during the baroque -- I think
the original problem was the dynamic control, not the dynamic level.  It
wasn't until later that they were able to make piano's loud, once they
could reinforce the body and increase the tension on the strings.

As for extended techniques, many classically built instruments are
designed specifically to suppress squawks and such.  A violin luthier
doesn't want that high pitch squeeking sound to come out easily since in
most conventional music that's considered "bad".  If you're playing
music with extended techniques you probably don't want to play on a
violin that suppresses those techniques...many modern luthiers don't do
suppress them anymore. 

Consider the roland 303.  At the time it was released it wasn't really
considered a good instrument...it was supposed to sound like a bass but
didn't, it didn't have a very intuitive interface and it sounded
too mechanical.  But then someone came along and said "wow, this
sounds cool" and boom...of course for making microsound the 303 would be
a horrible tool for the exact reasons it's a good tool for techno.

Ok, last thing; 

You can't have a good instrument without good music because why would
anybody bother to build them?  It's evolution, the bad instruments stop
being built and the good ones get improved upon.  What defines them is
good has always been how they are used.  Yes there have been many experiments
with instrument building but in general they're only good for making 
a particular sound...your list of creative musicians/composers all do
this, taking advantage of an instrument or object to get a particular
sound out of it.  Notice that they tend to use a lot of instruments when
making music, not usually just one.

Soren

* Kim Cascone wrote (Fri, Nov 08, 2002 at 09:40:15AM -0800):
> 
> > I'm saying what makes something good is the way it's used.  If we have
> > an easy to use tool, but nobody ever uses it to make something good,
> > doesn't that mean it's really a bad tool?
> no...it just means that no-one has made good art with it yet...you have to
> first ask: "easy to use" for who? and then what makes a "good" tool
> >  Stradivarius designed his
> > violins for music that had already been written and was already accepted
> > at the time as good.  Because there was already a definition of what is
> > good, he knew how to design the instrument.
> yes, but he was also a notoriously bad violinist...so by your logic if only
> he played his violins (badly) then his violins could be considered "bad"
> tools...
> 
> > A stradivarius violin would never have been considered history if they were
> > designed to make it easy to play avante garde squeeks but were used to
> > play bach.  It wouldn't work.
> your confusing traditional->conventional repertoire with extended
> techniques...one is an extension of the other and different qualities of
> instruments will yield different results...see: Tom Waits, Keith Rowe, Fred
> Frith, Derek Bailey etc
> 
> > Notice the direction I'm moving in; good instruments come from good
> > music, not necessarily the other way around.
> "good" is not the same as conventional...pianos came about because previous
> keyboard instruments couldn't be heard by all people in larger groups
> (people in the rear of the audience had a hear time hearing harpsichord
> music for example)...instruments are invented/improved/developed for a
> variety of reasons...and most instruments don't have a repertoire until
> after they are invented...so how could "good" instruments be derived from
> "good" music if the music for that instrument hasn't been written yet?
> 
> >  If we don't ever have good
> > music there is no way to define an instrument as good...I would venture
> > to say that if no good music is ever made on an instrument than we can
> > define that instrument as bad.
> sorry, but this is starting to sound like "chicken or the egg" to me... ;)
> 
> 
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