"art" composer in a strange land ... needs your ad

[rachmiel]

warning: long(ish) musical autobiographical sketch follows. read on at your own risk ... ;-)

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i cut my compositional teeth creating scored "art" music. my heroes were stockhausen, berio, boulez, ligeti, xenakis, cage, zappa (his more composed pieces). i got the sound in my head (complexity, assymetry, dissonance, 12-tone-ism, etc.) and it defined my own musical sensibility.

eventually i got sick of the "art" music milieu: the smug academic scene, dreary festivals, pompous critics, music that looked great on paper but sounded dead. so i moved onto improvisation, performance art music, experiments with linguistics, etc.

five years ago i discovered reaktor, and i've never looked back. :-) the problem is (and here's where i need your advice), my musical sensibility is still post-webernian art music. which makes many of my pieces too strange/abstract for downtown (as opposed to "high art") listeners. and too pop-py for many "high art" listeners.

woe is me: i'm stuck halfway between worlds! ;-)

here's what i wonder ...

- is there anyone out there with a similar story to tell? if so, how have you dealt with it?

- anyone have advice for how i might proceed? frankly, i *love* having one foot uptown and one downtown, it's very stimulating ... but it tends to marginalize my music, since the pieces don't fully inhabit either world (thus leaves members of those worlds a bit bemused).

thanks for your thoughts.

rachMiel

[bluedad]

well, who are you doing music for?
yourself or an audience?
as for me I love doing happy pop tunes and am
constantly at war with my inner twin who loves to
to do ambient/glitch or anything other than pop.

[rachmiel]

> well, who are you doing music for? yourself or an audience?

both! music is (complex and multilayered) communication for me, and the entities i'm trying to communicate with are my fellow humans. however, i resist (very strongly) creating pieces that are in a certain popular style/genre, because for me the highest good is composing one's *self* (and no individual self fits into any genre).

> as for me I love doing happy pop tunes and am constantly at war with my inner twin who loves to to do ambient/glitch or anything other than pop.

why at war? does doing one conflict with doing the other? why?

[Markleford]

Here's a short anecdote:

I have an entry on ruccas.org, a repository for compositions from unusual methods. Originally I was rejected based on my algorithmically generated work, because the music was too listenable and I enumerated SONAR, Reason, and pHATmatikPRO as my go-to tools. (*obviously* you need to use csound or at least Reaktor to be a serious "art" musico, yes?)

So I know what it's like to come up against the narrow-minded inclusive pomposity. Though I suppose not entirely close-minded, as I was eventually accepted.

Having my feet in two worlds, I apply my automatic composition techniques to film scores, which is also accepting of "artificial" and "mathematical" tonal composition techniques like tone-rows and note clusters, etc, as well as odd time signatures (or no-time!). I use algorithmic or aleatoric generators in practically all of my KVR contest entries. Some of those entries required more C++ coding time on my part than actual composition.

I do agree that it limits commercial viability, though. At this point I think my future is more on the software side than the music side, creating performance MIDI tools for myself and others, but I'll always keep a foot in actual music at least part time.

- m

[robogone]

And me:

I first learned to play the guitar and had a mix of 70s punk and hard rock sensibilities, probably without trying to find my own style and just learning other people's styles.

I eventually took in all other styles, and found that I had a skill for finding riffs and fills for other people's music.

Some 25 years later, I now play a bunch of instruments, and have probably covered just about every style.

Why do you feel the need to place yourself in a particular niche? Why not just play what you like and not worry about it. You sound like you're scared that your music will be interpreted as not fitting into the genre that you want it to fit in to. Just play it and enjoy!

[pendle]

woe is me: i'm stuck halfway between worlds!


rachMiel

dear rachMiel

you seem to be going through some kinda dark night of the soul judging by this and your idm thread

the irony is that your Reaktor .ens have probably been used by and inspired countless numbers of "bedroom/studio tweakers" across the world making you one of contemporary electronic musics ( note i didn't write idm ) founding fathers......

i think i'm coming at things in the opposite direction from you , i make a living out of composing, producing and teaching music and am becoming more academacised, but i am completely self taught and have never had a music lesson in my life.
Being a musical ignoramous ( in a good way ) i've had to develop my own way of expressing myself musically , which although bound by the basic rules leaves me i think free in some ways AND limited in others.
My musical vocabulary is probably much smaller than yours but hopefully i have compensated in areas of texture and sound design by using my ears as my guide. Which refering to my point in the idm thread about idm being the new punk, could only have happened in the past 10 years or so because of computer technology.

I think "proper" music training can be a straight jacket because it is so dependant on rules and seems to squash the ability to improvise and make a beautiful noise out of 90% of the students that i teach.

But that may just be to do with the concept of "musicality " itself, which is a whole new thread.

[rachmiel]

> Why do you feel the need to place yourself in a particular niche? Why not just play what you like and not worry about it.

i've been doing that for five years and have grown tired of putting so much effort/heart into music that seems to speak to so few people. like i said: communication is very important to me. if i'm having a ball, but no one else is feeling it ... i've failed at communicating.

> You sound like you're scared that your music will be interpreted as not fitting into the genre that you want it to fit in to.

i have painstakingly avoided composing in *any* popular genre (for proof, see: www.rachmiel.org/music/music.htm). my hope was (perhaps still is) that if the music is "good" enough, eventually i would get my audience. but i'm losing patience ... and starting to feel very isolated. which is why i'm considering throwing my hat into the ring and composing pieces that are within known genres.

[clueless]

which is why i'm considering throwing my hat into the ring and composing pieces that are within known genres.

I suppose you've tried mucking about in the spirit of "mass-communication" genres rather than the style?

I wouldn't worry too much about being "genre". You might start that way, but you'll almost certainly beat it out of shape and turn it into something else. It can be a good place to start, but I suppose you already know all that.

*edit* and if the music is "good" enough anyway, what difference does genre make?

[rachmiel]

> you seem to be going through some kinda dark night of the soul

yes! and have been for quite a while ... it's very difficult for me to put as much effort into composing as i do and have it touch (deeply) so few people.

> the irony is that your Reaktor .ens have probably been used by and inspired countless numbers of "bedroom/studio tweakers"

i'm very happy for this. it is a warm light in my dark night ...

> i think i'm coming at things in the opposite direction from you , i make a living out of composing, producing and teaching music and am becoming more academacised, but i am completely self taught and have never had a music lesson in my life.

exact opposite! i was on track to become a university composition professor, then dropped out (for reasons mentioned earlier in this thread) and went deep underground. the problem with the underground is that it's so poorly funded ... ;-)

> I think "proper" music training can be a straight jacket because it is so dependant on rules

i very much agree. which is why i eventually dropped out and moved on. on the other hand, trying to achieve excellence without a solid foundation can be very difficult. this is where i feel i am right now with respect to genres such as idm, drum and bass, even ambient. i've got the ear and lots of compositional experience, but i am not *steeped* in the music of these genres, therefore end up by creating pieces that leave lovers of the genres a bit perplexed (or worse: bored).

[DWb]

I just had a listen to your music, and it's pretty cool, but I can also see that it's one of those things that I like but a lot of people won't. If people, particularly 'pop' fans, aren't connecting to it, then I don't think it's so much from the lack of a specific genre as from the lack of (obvious uplifting tonal) melodies and (head nodding toe tapping) rhythms. So my advice would be that rather than trying to fit your music to the template of a genre, you could try just bringing out the accessible elements (ie dumbing it down). It'd be really interesting to see whether you could do this and produce something totally genreless but poppy.

Trying to get into a 'hardcore' genre like drum and bass from the outside is very hard - it's as much a cultural music as a genre, and if you aren't really steeped in that culture you tend to end up with a slightly embarassing pastiche, or at best an interesting reappropriation of the elements of the genre - you won't get drum and bass DJs playing the tunes any more than you would have got a hungarian folk fiddler playing Bartok.

But I'd be quite happy if you carried on as you are. It's cool music.

[pendle]

>
i very much agree. which is why i eventually dropped out and moved on. on the other hand, trying to achieve excellence without a solid foundation can be very difficult. this is where i feel i am right now with respect to genres such as idm, drum and bass, even ambient. i've got the ear and lots of compositional experience, but i am not *steeped* in the music of these genres, therefore end up by creating pieces that leave lovers of the genres a bit perplexed (or worse: bored).

seems that all you really lack is the confidence to plough your own furrow because you're being pulled in too many different directions, and you're being pulled in too many directions because you are actually too knowledgable in too many directions.

I'm therefore deducing that you probably arn't in your teens or early twenties and have seen enough musical fads coming and going to be slightly jaded by the next "new thing " because you can see the baggage its already carrying.

aaah for the bliss of ignorance....

i'm trying to do a new album myself and after the first flush of excitement at the equation
computer manipulation + pop x funny noises = something interesting
i'm finding it difficult to get excited again...

ps search "idmonster" for my stuff if your interested to hear what i'm actually talking about.

[rachmiel]

> If people, particularly 'pop' fans, aren't connecting to it, then I don't think it's so much from the lack of a specific genre as from the lack of (obvious uplifting tonal) melodies and (head nodding toe tapping) rhythms. So my advice would be that rather than trying to fit your music to the template of a genre, you could try just bringing out the accessible elements (ie dumbing it down). It'd be really interesting to see whether you could do this and produce something totally genreless but poppy.

interesting advice. it will be difficult ... because "dumbing it down" as you suggest is very painful for me. it feels like a betrayal of my *self* ... something i've grown rather attached to over the past few decades. ;-) but it's worth a try.

> Trying to get into a 'hardcore' genre like drum and bass from the outside is very hard - it's as much a cultural music as a genre, and if you aren't really steeped in that culture you tend to end up with a slightly embarassing pastiche, or at best an interesting reappropriation of the elements of the genre - you won't get drum and bass DJs playing the tunes any more than you would have got a hungarian folk fiddler playing Bartok.

very well said. i'm a horror movie afficionado, and i can always feel it (deep down) when a director who's not really steeped in the genre (or loves the genre) tries to create his/her take on a horror movie. it just always feels somewhat wrong and possibly pompous/annoying.

> But I'd be quite happy if you carried on as you are. It's cool music.

that's good to hear. :-)

[DWb]

> If people, particularly 'pop' fans, aren't connecting to it, then I don't think it's so much from the lack of a specific genre as from the lack of (obvious uplifting tonal) melodies and (head nodding toe tapping) rhythms. So my advice would be that rather than trying to fit your music to the template of a genre, you could try just bringing out the accessible elements (ie dumbing it down). It'd be really interesting to see whether you could do this and produce something totally genreless but poppy.

interesting advice. it will be difficult ... because "dumbing it down" as you suggest is very painful for me. it feels like a betrayal of my *self* ... something i've grown rather attached to over the past few decades. ;-) but it's worth a try.

I'm not suggesting that you set out to make your music more stupid. Just that you try to gradually emphasize and explore the more accessible elements and see what happens. But changing the way that you make music to the extent that you don't feel happy with it yourself almost certainly won't bring you good results.

[John Vulich]

Just market whatever you're doing with IDM style graphics like Aphex Twin, Richard Devine, Alvo Noto and the like. Kids eat up abstract shit nowadays. It shouldn't be too hard to market to them.

[John Vulich]