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Re: [microsound] guitar distortion as the 1st glitch aesthetic?



graham miller wrote:

it occurred to me that overdriven guitar amps, and their eventual
(inevitably?) incorporation into the rock aesthetic is one of the
greatest examples of 'glitch' (or as cascone calls it, 'the aesthetics
of failure') at and early point, prior to digital technology. i'm
looking for the definite papers to cite or a paper i'm writing on
'glitch music.' (actually a master's)  any ideas? believe it or not,
it's not something that's been heavily investigated, especially in its
relationship to 'post-digital' music... i think it starts here, at sense
of a technology 'broken' or malfunctioning use with sheer intent of
generating a sound that was never intended... the basis of rock music, i
think (especially if one wants to differentiate between 'rock' and rock
n' roll.' i know the brief history adn process involved, but i'm looking
for the details and actually events in which music became 'overdriven'?

who was it who said 'i don't play my guitar, i play my amplifier; the guitar's just a signal-receiving aerial' or some such..?


Anyway I like where you're going with this.

My immediate reaction was 'but but but what about accidents in technology creation'? I'd say 'glitch' as a process has been used since time immemorial to generate new ideas, new technologies, new techniques, and what have you. The danger in pointing to guitar distortion and saying 'there is the first glitch' is that you seem to be assuming two things -

a) glitch is only important if it's consciously used (which is of course a thoroughly good post-modernist approach, i don't know whether that's what you're going for or not..)

b) (this is a little broader) glitch can only appear once traditions have been established - actually this is an interesting point. i've been thinking about technology, especially noise-making technology, and it occurs to me that synth manufacturers make synths for a particular purpose and then they used for some other purpose regardless of what happens /purely by virtue of the fact that the people using it aren't the people who designed it, ie, assigned it intended noises/.

obvious (recent) example the Roland 303 Bassline Synthesiser, designed with the intentional purpose of simulating a bassline, but then used most strikingly to produce distinctly un-bass noises (acid house). I'm guessing the Roland engineers figured no-one would ever want to use the horrible squelchy noises it made on certain settings because they weren't bass noises.

My point is, if you're working Way Back When as a noise machine builder, or experimenter, or whatever, you have /no idea/ what your machine sholud be /capable/ of doing, let alone having an intention of what it /ought/ to do; thus every noise it produces could be considered a glitch, or, tipping your conception sideways, /no/ noise it produces is a glitch, because it doesn't have intended noises anyway.

Cool.

I hope that's suitably muddied things up for you. Have fun :)

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