read w/ caution - elec. music and theory?

[mooter]

Is anyone familiar with Andre Popp & his Orchestra - Delirium in Hi-Fi (1957) and Perry & Kingsley - In Sounds From the Way Out!? (1966)
It may be well known to you guys and I'm not saying it's cutting edge, well, I just wanted to be cool and name drop :hehe:
I think Delirium in Hi-Fi might be one of those in between "experimental yet still unchallengeable works (contemporary classic with recording ingenuity?"
But this stuff is nothing compared to what I think you guys are talking about besides obvious abstract works.

[foosnark]

I'm a firm believer that if we are to consider it challenging, art should challenge our principles and preconceptions, ask us to see things differently from the way we are most comfortable. Being complacent in life is easy, art is a useful mechanism to shake us from our complacency.

I've been thinking about this for a while. What happens when we no longer have any complacency left? What happens when the shock value wears off?

Like many of us, I've become accustomed to some things and accept them as genres that mainstream listeners wouldn't recognize as music: noise, glitch, DSP, breakcore, drone, etc. Those are no longer "challenging" merely because of their form. I take them at face value and find them beautiful, energizing, boring, disappointing, gimmicky, or whatever.

I'm also pretty much immune to shock from process. "Preparing" of instruments, playing them in ways other than their original design intended, playing non-instruments as instruments, circuit bending, databending, algorithmic composition etc. -- nothing is really a shock there.

I think also that when I do encounter some kind of musical/auditory form that actually is new to me, my reaction to it is very much moderated by exposure to much other "challenging" material.

[tee boy]

I'm a firm believer that if we are to consider it challenging, art should challenge our principles and preconceptions, ask us to see things differently from the way we are most comfortable. Being complacent in life is easy, art is a useful mechanism to shake us from our complacency.

I've been thinking about this for a while. What happens when we no longer have any complacency left? What happens when the shock value wears off?

Like many of us, I've become accustomed to some things and accept them as genres that mainstream listeners wouldn't recognize as music: noise, glitch, DSP, breakcore, drone, etc. Those are no longer "challenging" merely because of their form. I take them at face value and find them beautiful, energizing, boring, disappointing, gimmicky, or whatever.

I'm also pretty much immune to shock from process. "Preparing" of instruments, playing them in ways other than their original design intended, playing non-instruments as instruments, circuit bending, databending, algorithmic composition etc. -- nothing is really a shock there.

I think also that when I do encounter some kind of musical/auditory form that actually is new to me, my reaction to it is very much moderated by exposure to much other "challenging" material.

But isnt this just like everything in modern life?

We want to be happy, immediately, so hunt for the quick fixes. But pretty soon we need more, more, MORE! Yet never achieve the happiness that can be achieved through appreciation for the simple things.

I can see the same thing being true with music and shock value. At first, a genre may seem way out, but this is often just a fix, disguising the truth - that there is very little musicial substance in many cases. Once the wow factor wears off, you're left looking for the next.

I think this is why Iv spent the last few years taking a step back from contempary music and looking back on the music from the past. At first it may lack the 'bish bosh bang' of our contempary music, but I find that it offers depth that a majority of modern music lacks.

Ultimately, music is just a reflection of culture, and our culture is pretty f**ked these days! I tend to think of this 'shock' music as being the 'fast food' and 'binge drinking' or music - its great for a short time, so great that nothing else even registers... then shortly after you feel empty and devoid of satisfaction!

Fortunately, there are Thomas Newman and BT to see us through these dark days...

Ok, so perhaps Im exaggerating. I do think that there is so much great music about today. I just wish we could get past this 'I need to offend the world for my art to be genuine' crap. What the hell is wrong with good, old fashioned musical substance?

Then again, that probably would sell to well would it?

Perhaps when I compose my next keyboard prelude I should insect the words 'f**k, c**t and bollocks' at the end, so I give it one of those explicit lyrics labels Then my sister will probably buy ten copies (she's 21, going on 15)

TB

[shamann]

I've been thinking about this for a while. What happens when we no longer have any complacency left? What happens when the shock value wears off?

Like many of us, I've become accustomed to some things and accept them as genres that mainstream listeners wouldn't recognize as music: noise, glitch, DSP, breakcore, drone, etc. Those are no longer "challenging" merely because of their form. I take them at face value and find them beautiful, energizing, boring, disappointing, gimmicky, or whatever.

I'm also pretty much immune to shock from process. "Preparing" of instruments, playing them in ways other than their original design intended, playing non-instruments as instruments, circuit bending, databending, algorithmic composition etc. -- nothing is really a shock there.

I think also that when I do encounter some kind of musical/auditory form that actually is new to me, my reaction to it is very much moderated by exposure to much other "challenging" material.

You've misunderstood me, I'm not equating shock value with challenging. Challenging should make us think, ask questions, try to see things from different angles. Shock value only shocks.

I've heard some works dozens of times that I still think offer me a challenge, even though I'm not surprised by them anymore. I guess "shake our complacency" makes it sound like shock, but I'm relating it more to something that keeps us thinking, keeps us from being lazy. I agree that not all art needs to be a grand challenge, but I never said it had to.

[Toxikator]

I think it's foolish to think of music as anything more than music.

It is purely aesthetic, at least the great stuff is. Art is an end, not a means; good music is good because it IS, there's no reason for it or to it.

[tee boy]

I think it's foolish to think of music as anything more than music.

It is purely aesthetic, at least the great stuff is. Art is an end, not a means; good music is good because it IS, there's no reason for it or to it.

Hmmm, I think you are probably right.

But Im beginning to question the validity of the ideas 'good music' and 'bad music'.

How are we to define what is good and what is bad, when the over powering majority of the audience DOES NOT listen to it as the artist intended.

Lets face it, most people listen to music because they like what it says about them. Its fashion. Your snob auntie listens to Bach and Handel over afternoon tea because she thinks of herself as being a bit sophisticated. Your teenage cousin listens to hip hop because he'd like to fancy himself a bit of a bad boy player, lol.

I dont think that many people just sit down and listen to the music for what it is. Id wager this is probably why most people get stuck in certain genres, unable (or should I say unwilling) to branch out - their musical taste is just an extension of their 'style'.

For us its different. The music speaks to us, we have an affinity with it. We spend our lives trying to unravel the mysteries of our favorite works, and create works of great meaning ourselves.

Perhaps we (composers) are the only people alive who can truly pass judgement on music?

Or maybe even we cant. Its possible that even we are to blinkered to be truly objective. If we were to be objective in our judgements, what would make up criteria?

In that light, perhaps there is only 'popular' music and 'unpopular'?

TB

[shamann]

I think it's foolish to think of music as anything more than music.

It is purely aesthetic, at least the great stuff is. Art is an end, not a means; good music is good because it IS, there's no reason for it or to it.

I, and, thankfully, the wisdom of the ages, think that's a load of poo.

Art is a deliberate endeavour. If it were only aesthetic, we would subsist just fine looking upon flowers and listening to the birds. Nowt wrong with that, and certainly there are plenty of times art can't hold a candle to the world around us. Art is performed, aesthetics just are. If one endeavours towards a certain aesthetic, then the outcome is different for the effort that went in to it.

If art were only valuable for its aesthetics, why look at paintings at all? There are plenty of things to look at already, a whole lifetime could be spent looking at things that are not art and still you would not have seen them all.

[Toxikator]

But a flower is not as beautiful as a painting, a waterfall is not as beautiful as a symphony.

perhaps you're missing the meaning of "aesthetics"

[shamann]

But a flower is not as beautiful as a painting, a waterfall is not as beautiful as a symphony.

Why?

perhaps you're missing the meaning of "aesthetics"

Actually I think you might be:

"a particular taste for or approach to what is pleasing to the senses; a pleasing appearance or effect."

[mistertoast]

Most waterfalls I've seen are more beautiful than most paintings I've seen.

[Toxikator]

But a flower is not as beautiful as a painting, a waterfall is not as beautiful as a symphony.

Why?

Because if they WEREN'T man would be driven to compose symphonies. Do you think that music came from man's need to be less complacent?

Most accounts of music deal with it being some form of divine presence; one of my favorites (I forget the wording and the author, bear with me) is that music is "the expression of that which is inexpressable". It is emotional and beautiful and powerful, not because it makes us noncomplacent but because it gets us closer to God (if you beleive in that sort of thing).

The point is music is not a means to an end. If it were, it would not have had such a divine status.

Music can, of course, be functional, but I think in order to even CLAIM that a piece of music is great, in and of itself (and not just at fulfilling it's purpose) you have to disregard its function and take it as is... and just listen to it. Don't analyze it, don't worry about it, don't bust out a pen and paper and try to figure out if it's challenging you and engaging you and rattling cages. Just LISTEN to it and pass judgement.

[aaastronomer]

not Shostakovich...i think you're thinking of Stockhausen (http://www.stockhausen.org/)...also, Reich's early music used loop manipulation but it was and is mostly, standard instruments and singers playing and singing standard 'western tonal centerism', if you will, with a distillation of african rhythms called: 'pulse music'. (if you want to hear the real thing try: congotronics (http://www.amazon.com/Congotronics-Buzz ... F8&s=music))

now, there are a lot of academic electronic musicians coming out of various university music departments...(does juilliard have an electronic music school? doesn't look like it.)...there are many compilations of this stuff around (well...at least tower music in d.c. had a large collection)and 'the computer music journal' used to or does review this sort of music...

except for production standards being higher (and a few exceptional pieces) most of the current serious electronic music sounds like the columbia-princeton work and the other 'classical electronic' composers mentioned above...what this tells me, is that we've gone as far as the cochlea can go!

[leahzero]

But a flower is not as beautiful as a painting, a waterfall is not as beautiful as a symphony.

You've got that backwards.

[DWb]

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.

I'm not sure I'd go that far, but there's certainly a huge amount of experimentation - a sort of functionalist pop-modernism - in a lot popular music. I'd consider the canonical examples to be reggae (from the first JA-boogie recordings up to and including the foundation of digital dancehall) and the UK rave scene (from bleep and Shut Up And Dance through to about 1995). In both cases, you have a (popular) audience who want to hear something new and have no interest in anything remotely past it, so innovation becomes an evolutionary imperative for the producers rather than just something that's quite nice if they can be bothered doing it as often seems to be the case in self consciously 'progressive' or 'experimental' music.

On the other hand, it seems to get quite weird when you start talking about 'more experimental' or 'more innovative' in an absolute way. Is breaking X amount of formal ground while making thousands of people dance more radical than breaking Y amount of formal ground while making hundreds of people stroke their beards? What really constitutes 'new formal ground'? Is jungle's shift of focus to rhythm and texture just going over the same ground that contemporary classical had previously covered, or is doing something in a funky / danceable / populist way actually 'new formal ground' relative to doing something broadly similar in an academic way?

It seems to me that people like LaMonte Young and John Cage already hit the boundaries of how many formal rules and limitations you can reject, so isn't everyone just treading old ground in different ways on some level? I think it depends how finely grained your definition of new formal ground is... at some point you have to start considering people as being innovative or experimental relative to their immediate forerunners rather than in the big picture of all music ever.

[Toxikator]

But a flower is not as beautiful as a painting, a waterfall is not as beautiful as a symphony.

You've got that backwards.

Then why don't you have an iPod full of waterfalls?