read w/ caution - elec. music and theory?

[burritosdaily]

Toxikator, I agree for the most part but it seems like there has been a "dumbing down" in regards to appreciation for experimentation. I hope I'm wrong here... but it feels as though the audience for "new" music is dwindling in a way that is disproportional to the audiences of the 17-18th centuries that you mentioned.

I guess what I'm trying to say is don't you think Hayden, Mozart, and Beethoven would have had a larger audience for their "experimental" music that what would gather for a contemporary composer today?

[Toxikator]

Not at all. I think that, outside of high society, there wasn't nearly the appreciation for Haydn (perhaps Mozart is an exception here) in the common sector as people believe.

What interests me is the idea more that, say, DJ Qbert or Dieselboy or Aphex Twin are more experimental than John Cage ever was. What they do is more mainstream, in a sense, but it also experiments with musical paradigms and approaches that were unheard of before them.

Not those particular artists either... I guess my point is that whatever serialism, chromaticism, or polytonicism did to experiment with musical paradigms, DnB, Turntablism, etc. did it more.

[burritosdaily]

Ah, I like this line of thought... can you fill this out a little? How are these more experimental that John Cage?

[Toxikator]

Cage was experimenting with ways of altering instruments, tunings, scales, and rhythms (and silences) to create unique rhythms, melodies, and harmonies.

the key factor? He was still interested in melodies, rhythms, and to some extent harmonies.

Drum'n'bass (and it's co/sub genres of Drill, IDM, Jungle, and I guess Dub) completely inverts the musical paradigm. Rather than having a rhythmic backdrop with a melodic lead, it has a melodic backdrop with a percussive lead. The DRUMS are the key feature, rather than a timekeeper... while the synthetic noises are often repeated and simplistic.

Also, DnB in particular (I'm thinking Dieselboy and his ilk here) is based around "tonal" sounds which have no melodic or harmonic function and exist purely for timbral intrigue.

So Cage was writing music that was rhythmically supported with melodic leads (just weird rhythms and leads). DnB is supported by amelodic and aharmonic tones, with drums as the lead element.

Turntablism is similar, only it's primarily built with rhythmic and timbral "cuts". for example, a song might consist of a beat, a disjunct harmony where each chord is a different instrument, and a lead composed of a nonmelodic sound.

Unlike DnB, though, where the BEAT is the key part of the lead (and how it changes), the turntablist uses a form of melody/rhythm that just doesn't have a key. It's arbitrary frequencies and timbres made from scratching sound effects and vocals.

In other words, though these genres are accesible to the mainstream due to their "hookish" nature, their hooks are completely unique in nature, comprised of nothing which we would expect of hooks (simple, catchy rhythms and melodic or harmonic figures). Composers like Schoenberg were still using rhythms and melodic or harmonic figures, only the "experimentation" came from what KINDS of melodic or harmonic figures.

[shamann]

If I had to take a guess, I would say that the most 'serious' compositions are being churned out in film.

If by serious you mean the most generically adherent to the theoretical status quo, then I agree. Otherwise, our interpretations of the ideas of serious music are very different, and I can't even guess what and who it is you actually mean.

It seems, as evidenced by this thread of conversation, that there are a hard to find few pursuing "serious" (as it was called earlier - hard to find a good word that doesn't belittle some aspect of music and that is not the intention) electronic music.

There are in fact many. In fact, many more than ever before. People like Milton Babbit, Morton Subotnick, Vladimir Ussachevsky - I reckon the only reason why you know of them is that their names are included in textbooks. When they were at the height of their powers, no one outside the people who influence what gets written in textbooks really knew who they were or what they were doing. To that same end, if someone's standard for trends today in any kind of music is 50 Cent, there is absolutely no way that you'll ever come across anyone similar to Milton Babbit.

But, as hinted at by whyterabbyt, it depends on your concept of music theory and serious music (for lack of a better term). I'm not sure those who can be considered as expanding our theoretical framework today do so by keeping with the musical status quo on harmony and composition.

Guys like Barry Truax, Curtis Roads, Miller Puckette, Trevor Wishart, etc have all espoused their theoretical frameworks for computer music, generally serious stuff, but definitely not in keeping with the Hans Zimmer/BT strain of music.

If you scour through Sequenza 21, you'll come across hundreds of very serious musical types. Or through Jeff Harrington's http://cacophonous.org/ . Or read Kyle Gann's blog. Check out music by Trimpin or David First or Mikel Rouse or Robert Ashley or Meredith Monk, and so on. I take what I do musically very seriously, and have largely worked towards incorporating and building on ideas presented or espoused by Harry Partch, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Cornelius Cardew, Derek Bailey, John Fahey, Kim Cascone, Phill Niblock, Trevor Wishart, Barry Truax, Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, Tony Conrad, Steve Reich, Herbert Brun, Akita Masami, Daniel Menche, Hank Shocklee, Miles Davis, Peter Christopherson, Tod Dockstader, Philip Jeck, Cecil Taylor, Markus Popp, Nakajima Akifumi, and on and on and on. But in terms of the twelve-tone harmony model, or the basic tenants of musical composition they teach you when you learn to play the piano, I'm fairly lax, even rudimentary. Even then, I recently did an electroacoustic/musique concrete type of composition modelled on the sonata form. But if you go in with blinders, you likely wouldn't recognize it since it doesn't sound like Beethoven (and in fact contains mostly only treated spoken vocals and noises).

Don't worry, the long-windedness isn't an indication that your question offended me, I'm just long-winded. But I'm always surprised when folk make sweeping pronouncements on musical trends when their experience with the musical pool is obviously limited, and their criteria is largely narrow, naive and fairly antiquated.

[burritosdaily]

Toxikator, Thanks... this helps and your explanation is compelling...

Shamann, again, I confessed my ignorance and desire for exposure in my original question... so I didn't mean to make inappropriate sweeping pronouncements. I stopped by your site and browsed through a few of the audio files and I like what you are doing. I think your work fits well within the discussion at hand... you are far from the club music composer and you are writing very good, intellectually stimulating music.

[k-bird]

I think you'll find some very complex meters and harmonies (at least for the style) coming from RDJ, too, though I can't speak as to whether this is out of a theoretical background or a good ear.

RDJ's self-taught; even as someone fairly well-versed in music theory it gives me a headache trying to analyse RDJ's harmonic structures. There's loads of chromatic and microtonal stuff on SAWII for example.

[shamann]

Shamann, again, I confessed my ignorance and desire for exposure in my original question... so I didn't mean to make inappropriate sweeping pronouncements. I stopped by your site and browsed through a few of the audio files and I like what you are doing. I think your work fits well within the discussion at hand... you are far from the club music composer and you are writing very good, intellectually stimulating music.

Aw, go on, you flatterer.

Sorry, I can be a bit caustic at times, wasn't trying to sound all attacking-like. And I was aiming to answer both yours and tee-boy's statements on the potential dumbing down of music, so aiming more at something like a composite pronouncement.

But this world is such that the veneer is very shiny, blindingly so, and the factions that keep up the shine maintain it with far more resources than we have at our disposal. So it can be hard to see past its blinding light to find the rest of what is going on.

As the music business and education establishment have grown over the last fifty years, I wager that nearly every strain in music is at its most active this day and age than at any previous time. But with volume comes dilution and sensory overload and an inevitable zombified revivalist ethos. So, while I'm sure more sonatas are being written today than at any time during the 18th and 19th centuries, they may very well be only pale shadows of past glories. And hurdy gurdy men, there are still travelling hurdy gurdy who show up at folk festivals all over the world.

All that's to say that the likeliest culprit for the dumbing down of music, if that is happening (which I think isn't, it's just the dumb stuff is also more voluminous), is most likely the revivalists, not creating but repeating ad nauseum until you get 125th-generation photocopy quality across the board.

Equally, there are a lot of people carrying on the good work, and consistent with the sheer volume of all music today, there are probably more of them than ever. There just obscured by the likes of 50 Cent and Shakira. Best to not really think of the high-profile cases as making music so much as as contributing product to a commercial machine. Saves on the confusion.

[whyterabbyt]

And hurdy gurdy men, there are still travelling hurdy gurdy who show up at folk festivals all over the world.

All that's to say that the likeliest culprit for the dumbing down of music

Its the fault of the hurdy-gurdy men? Bastards! Hunt them down like dogs, I say.








(sorry, couldnt help it)

[shamann]

Damn them!

(but really, I'm a big fan of the hurdy gurdy men)

[burritosdaily]

Because of all of the mention of RDJ I am tying to find some stuff of his to listen to and not coming up with much... anyone have any ideas of a place online that I could explore?

[Polite Company]

@Toxikator: I think you have a pretty interesting argument there about the inversion of focus that many 'IDM' artist bring to the table. (don't like the term IDM but ) But I think its a little much to say because they exploit a traditionally more background aspect of music it makes them more innovative, I feel more that they are pioneers standing on the shoulders of giants as the phrase goes.

I'd also add that their focus on rhythmic ideas may be revolutionary in the forum on western it is nothing new to eastern and African music which have long had forms that focused on rhythmic structure above all else. Of course they way rhythm and polyrhythm are approached in electronic music is a completely different animal.


p.s. I love finally seeing a civil music theory discussion on KVR. It would seem now that there is a forum for it those who don't care for it can ignore it instead of attacking it.

And hurdy gurdy men, there are still travelling hurdy gurdy who show up at folk festivals all over the world.

All that's to say that the likeliest culprit for the dumbing down of music

and the deafening of small children and animals.

[shamann]

Because of all of the mention of RDJ I am tying to find some stuff of his to listen to and not coming up with much... anyone have any ideas of a place online that I could explore?

RDJ = AFX, Aphex Twin, Caustic Window, Richard D James, etc.

http://bleep.com/

They have a lot of his stuff at bleep.

[burritosdaily]

Polite - I agree that saying "more" innovative might be tough but I found Toxikator's argument to be compelling in that he has at least made a good point that they are at least as innovative as John Cage and the like...

I found his thinking refreshing because in a sense it seems that looking to melody/harmony for innovation puts innovation in an unnecessary box...

[respirator]

Steve, you namedropper you...

This is an interesting topic. It seems like theory is only considered so in hindsight. I tend to listen to contemporary efforts, while reading about yesterdays methods. A conundrum?