Re: [microsound] digital folk music --was Re: barcode MIDI

[Chris <mcnafong@xxxxxxxx>]

Some very interesting points here. However, one has to allow for some
latitude in discussing, essentially, what are perceived as limitations to a
particular instrument or tool. For example, I think Astor Piazola proved
that the accordian has a wealth of potential as a worthy, nuanced and
versatile instrument. It transcends its context.

Also, I think the folk music analogy works with a more positive spin. If we
think about how modular and adaptable the form has been in the last few
centuries and how, in many ways, it has travelled very well...

Cheers

Chris McNamara


derek holzer wrote:

> tobias c. van Veen wrote:
> [snip]
> > I think Ableton should be given credit
> > for simplifying the performativity of electronic music and turning the
> > laptop from complex code machine to an instrument.
>
> Yes, I think we should give Abelton credit for creating the most
> successful digital folk music instrument yet. Like the modtrackers
> of old, Live allows any old Neanderthal to throw a pile of samples
> together and come out with something that sounds just like what the
> software was programmed to create: German techno. Perhaps we should
> cease calling Live a musical instrument, and start to recognize it
> alongside Flash and AfterEffects as one of the greatest collaborative
> artworks of the computer age, written by software artist Robert Henke so
> that everyone can make Monolake tracks in the privacy of their own
> bedroom! [   ;-)   ]
>
> In this sense, Live and modtrackers alike are just the software
> incarnations of bagpipes, accordians and marimbas. Instruments crafted
> to make the folk music of their day. Sure, there are vituoso
> folk-software performers [Richard Chartier uses Live... to my suprise!],
> but it is predominantly lumpen, rank-and-file music made according the
> the strict limitations and rigid structure imposed by the
> folk-software-instrument. The kind of sounds which people are proud to
> have made [I fondly recall the beaming smiles of Romanian gypsies
> playing their violins at a village wedding I visited in Transylvania],
> but which don't really deserve any recognition outside of their
> immediate context simply because there are virtually indistinguishable
> from any other instance of the same folk-tradition. In short, the
> bedroom DJ is the new bagpiper.
>
> [For more on "digital folk art", I refer you to Pit Schultz's excellent
> essay in the Read_Me 2003 software art festival reader. See also
> Signwave's "AutoIllustrator", a vector graphics program where the GUI
> does all the work--with a mind of its own! Or catch Walter Benjamin's
> tongue firmly planted in Tim Hecker's cheek when he titles a track "The
> Work of Art in the Age of Cultural Overproduction"...]
>
> ...and speaking of violins, I's also like see this idea that the
> computer musician need not understand computers to make music stricken
> from the record. It's obviously a mistake in terminology. *Software*
> musicians don't need to understand how the computer works, so long as
> they've read their manual and know how to diddle around with other
> people's knobs and presets. But when I think of *computer* musicians, I
> think of people like Curtis Roads, and his first granulation programs
> which he had to punch on paper cards and fed into the machine manually.
> Because there was no other way to make that kind of sound, he had to
> invent it. And to do that, he needed to understand his chosen
> instrument, the computer, and how to make music with it. Hardly the kind
> of GUI-enabled digi.folkisms we are accustomed to now...
>
> cheers,
> d.
>
> --
> derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl
> ---Oblique Strategy # 79:
> "Go slowly all the way round the outside"
>
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