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

[ndkent <ndkent@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > 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.


I see a desire since the 60s and 70s to proclaim some kind of folk art 
in electronic music, there is a certain combination of a clean slate of 
bringing technology to the masses and an anachronism to it.

I usually see the "high", "fine", "academic", "intelligent" issue as a 
different one of discerning between artists who've passed some kind of 
admissions standard and the "masses" who haven't. Then there is a sort 
of excepted category, those who don't meet whatever standards of high 
art but show a perhaps innate or even "outsider" "folk" ability of some 
kind of merit.

On the subject of modtrackers, that's a tool category that's low cost 
and in most cases not considered "proper"  or sophisticated enough for 
the "professional" musician according to some. Other than a legal copy 
of  Live costing shall we say a bit more an important difference is you 
are building something at a fairly low level, you are not generally 
selecting and auditioning elements from a collection you obtain.

On the subject of Live, I see it as a tool that can be both creative 
and/or curatorial in various degrees. I'm using the term curatorial to 
mean expressing yourself via choosing pre-formed or semi-formed 
elements you like. That certainly can be creative in a way but the 
additional level of expression entwined in forming rather than choosing 
is a different degree of expression. I'm sure this idea can be taken 
another step, to one of making the tools you create with. But I don't 
see this a coupled to expression the same way, in other words it only 
makes things more or less expressive in relation to ones ability to use 
the tools. Conversely I do see the process of selecting formed elements 
to be quite a different degree of expression than forming and selecting 
the elements - even though it's conceivable the result may be similar 
the quality of expression isn't.

There is a challenge and an entertainment satisfaction in working with 
simple and rewarding tools, you can't take that away. I'm thinking here 
about issues of creating genuinely new art rather than variations.

Finally I should add that the recently released Live v4 now has MIDI 
instruments (like Apple Garage Band though of a higher quality) so that 
changes things in that you can play more traditional instruments. There 
was a degree of playing an effect or modeling something into the 
unrecognizable before though.

nicholas d. kent


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