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

[Praemedia <praemedia@xxxxxxxxx>]

Before I attempt to rip it, I'd just like to say there
are some pretty amazing thoughts in there;

BUT

> 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.

Hehehehe. Funny. In that sense then, I might want to
remind you that ALL instruments developed from folk
instruments, not just the ones above. Its a bit
shortsighted to not see this. What distinguishes folk
music from other music, 'high' art from 'pop' art (in
the warhol struggle era), is not the instruments used,
or even how they are used. Though you may be on to
something with idea of digital folk art with things
like abelton (and NOT just abelton but the entire COST
range of software and hardware coming within reach of
most of us), your foundation on what constitutes 'folk
music' is a little shakey here. 

> 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.

NOT a pleasant way to frame it. You are going to win
many converts by degrading certain styles and
traditions of music in such a smug manner. A lot of
the classical music tradition has, at certain points,
returned to the folk music traditions for inspiration.
Folk music traditions from all over the world have
regularly been 'recognition' outside of their context.

The unfortunate side-effect is that probably 50% or
more of this 'recognition' has come as a sort of
'exoticist' charicature (much like your postcard
perfect romainian gypsies).

> 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"...

I see niether  a self-directing vector graphics
program nor Hecker referencing Benjamin as signs or
examples of folk music. I'll drop the Benjamin/Hecker
connection because I haven't heard the piece, but to
equate the 'autoillustrator' with folk? So, the
instruments in folk traditions play themselves now?
Your idea of folk is getting thinnner and thinner....

> ...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. 

....speaking of violins, virtuoso performers of most
instruments to not know how to build or repair their
own instruments. That is left to master craftsman.
Whether you are delaing with software or hardware as
instrument the same can by applied - your ability to
build, repair or program your own instrument is no
measure of how interesting your music can or will be.

Personal note - I build my own computers from scratch
for fun (hardware) but i am an awful programmer. 

> 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.

All respect to Curtis Roads, I think you are a bit off
in postulating this sci-fi scenerio or putting Curtis
on a pedastal which would get really really crowded if
you actually counted all the people who had to develop
music via punchcards (being lucky enough to live in
the SF bay area, I've met a few of them). Nor did
Curtis, as you imply in a section I cut off invent the
use of punchcards or develope their use. He was using
the hardware tools available (the punchcard) to
develope new software, or *gasp* to feed info into
open software environments OTHER people had developed.

lance


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