Follower or Leader?

[tattiemannie]

Alright, just to add some fuel to the flames, .... I disagree with all of you!

If I say iam an artist, I'm an artist.
If I call my products art, then they are art.
If people disagree, they're wrong!
If they want to argue about it? i'll argue about it.
The more we argue, the more people will want to consider the argument and stick in their tuppence worth. The more tuppences worth, the more interesting and wide ranging the debate.
The more debate, the more attractive the issue becomes, and the more publicity generated.
The more the publicity and debate, the more controversial I become.
And the more controversial I become, the more relevant I become to the point that those who initially argued that I was not an artist, start to feel rather silly!

[vespers75]

A few notes:

There is a classic divide here. On the one hand, we have those who think there is a necessary relationship between music making and certain traditional skills. On the other hand we have people who don't think the aforementioned traditional skills are necessary. There are nuances on both sides, but I think we all understand the basic distinction.

Now there is another classic divide which is often confused with the first one. This divide is an aesthetic one. This one is a bit trickier, because taste is so individual, but in the largest sense it is more or less analogous to the first distinction. In other words, there are those who identify music with certain traditional sonorities and structures, and those who don't.

Now what I personally find really annoying is that so many people who do identify music with certain traditional skills also assume that anyone with said skills is going to gravitate toward the traditional structures and sonorities, and that the only people who are going to make the more 'experimental' music are going to be those who lack these skills. There is often an even more annoying assumption that most if not all experimental music is a form of bitter petulance, as if it's creators really wished they could sound like Sheryl Crow or John Mayer or Prince or Kenny G but just didn't have the skills.

Now the easiest corrective to this latter is a little history lesson. Because some of the most radical producers of avant-garde noise and dissonance and unintelligible structures were the most intensely trained musicians of their generation. Just listen to some of Pierre Boulez's music and read his biography on Wikipedia. All of the regulars at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse were graduates of the Paris Conservatoire or some similarly rigorous institution. I wonder, could the traditionalists here really tell the difference between the electronic 'noise' produced by these highly trained musicians and the noise produced by some amateur playing with Reaktor?

Would they like to submit to a blind test in this regard?

And if they couldn't tell the difference, would this be an indictment of 'noise music' or of their listening skills?

Well said.

[robogone]

I am using an example where we know that an act is random.

well that's a problem, because you didn't talk about the act being random, but that the act was of performing an action which had a random result, and there's a very large difference.

I was just going to pick up on that but you beat me to it, but will still add my thoughts to his comment.

Randomness is a valid art form every bit as much as contrived art, and there are plenty of examples musically that validate it - if there is intention to create art, what right has anyone to question the method, let alone the level of formal education received by the artist?

Even areas outside of art that are traditionally wary of non-structured approached have eventually succumbed to the fact that randomness is not a bad thing - engineering and science benefited greatly from the work done in the field of chaos theory.

Saying that a 'random' approach invalidates art is simply an opinion every bit as much as saying that not having a 4 year degree in music invalidates someone's musical productions.

[whyterabbyt]

One question for the 'by the rules' chort; if the rules are so damned important, why is there quite so much popular music by the 'properly trained' people which features shallow knockoffs of ethnic musical traditions. Where's your mastery of those skills and rules in your ambient shakuhachi witterings and your little tabla backfills?

There shouldnt be any at all until you guys learn those rules too, should there?

[vespers75]

One question for the 'by the rules' chort; if the rules are so damned important, why is there quite so much popular music by the 'properly trained' people which features shallow knockoffs of ethical musical traditions. Where's your mastery of those skills and rules in your ambient shakuhachi witterings and your little tabla backfills?

There shouldnt be any at all until you guys learn those rules too, should there?

Another excellent point.

[debra1rlo]

One question for the 'by the rules' chort; if the rules are so damned important, why is there quite so much popular music by the 'properly trained' people which features shallow knockoffs of ethical musical traditions. Where's your mastery of those skills and rules in your ambient shakuhachi witterings and your little tabla backfills?

There shouldnt be any at all until you guys learn those rules too, should there?

We're having the same argument, reversed, over in the tabla forum I frequent.

[zerocrossing]

I chose "leader" but only because I'm fairly experimental and I don't try to sound like anyone. However, I'm sure no one's following me so that rules out "leader" and puts me firmly into the crazy old guy category.

However, I don't mind the "how do I sound like..." because that was once me. When I was 14 there was nothing I wanted to do more than replicate Beatles tunes note for note. I even went as far at to buy a Vox Buckingham amp and a Rickenbacker 320 guitar. It was really helpful because it taught me to listen critically and carefully. Over time I learned to use my gear to get the sound I was hearing. Anyway, it developed a muscle that I still use all the time even though i haven't played a cover or tried to sound like anyone in years. When I'm thinking of a sound I usually know how I can get it.

[debra1rlo]

ethical musical traditions

Er, hold on, wouldn't that be ethnical musical traditions?

"Ethical musical traditions" kinda sounds like something eduardo would say.

[robogone]

"Ethical musical traditions" kinda sounds like something retardo would say.

Indeed...

[Locus M]

One question for the 'by the rules' chort; if the rules are so damned important, why is there quite so much popular music by the 'properly trained' people which features shallow knockoffs of ethical musical traditions. Where's your mastery of those skills and rules in your ambient shakuhachi witterings and your little tabla backfills?

And I will add a question too in that regard but probably on a less sophisticated level:

How come some believe that you have to learn to swim BEFORE you jump in the water? What happened to trial-and-error, autodidacticism and f**k-the-rules-I-play-by-ear? Cannot remember any names, but I believe I remember that auto-didact jazz- and fusion- instrumentalists were highly respected when I went to rhythmical-music school two decades ago, while us "composers" were regarded as "theoreticians" and dry "thinkers" of music, which not necessarily had any "feel" for it at all (and I was a joke to my peers anyway because I adored electronic music). OK, that was actually just before the "cognitive revolution" in science and society in general, so maybe it was just the last trace of new age romanticism in which intuition and feeling were the light of the world.

[debra1rlo]

"Ethical musical traditions" kinda sounds like something retardo would say.

Indeed...

You cut & pasted it before I'd made my edit!!

[Chuck E. Jesus]

I've listened to the "music" of some who are so disdainful of pop, commercial success and the music business, and my curiosity was rewarded with a variety of noise that is rigorously defended as being music. It was original, but not very interesting or even pleasant. The genre of ambient has been trashed by this stuff. It didn't occur to me that this was their escape from the constraints of music convention, which requires skill and talent, but that does make sense.

Excellent points. Absolutely what I'm thinking, too.
One could probably compare it to the event of punk music back then, too. Blame everything as being over-established, blame good players as "musician's musicians", music whores or whatever. Then start your "revolution" with "I'm not suiting any genre", "I want to be original" and what not. Don't forget to add some "music theory is for re-producers" and "I don't need an input device for my sequencer, MIDI keyboards are too limited anyway" flavour to it and you're all set.

on the other hand you had "proper musicians" jumping on the punk and especially "new wave" bandwagon in an attempt to cash in...for example: The Police were all accomplished musician who intentionally took punk/new wave/reggae elements and had huge success...some thought "now this i get", while other punk "purists" dismissed it as the latest MOR radio fare...but an even better example is Peter Frampton: after the flop of his post "Comes Alive" records he got a haircut, hooked up with a second tier new wave song writer, and produced some thankfully forgettable dross...

A disclaimer, just that nobody's getting me wrong: I do like quite some ambient music, some punk as well. And I'm also not referring to any specific persons involved in this thread to be sure. It's just general observations I made over the last years.

- Sascha

that's fine, but some people have a habit of making their usual blanket statements that, although not aimed at any individuals, certainly attack genres that some people work in without displaying any knowledge of these genres or the skill sets these people possess...

[whyterabbyt]

dang. ethnic, not ethical. wtf?

[debra1rlo]

dang. ethnic, not ethical. wtf?

Don't beat yourself up. It was an excellent setup.

[dirty oscillators]

I think you may be being a little unfair there. I don't get anywhere that the statement he made means you should throw away your integrity. You can have integrity but not total originality. And to be honest, there is very little "original" in music these days, both mainstream and otherwise. Most everything has been done before. Originality isn't the only thing that makes art to be "art". And I think that's what he probably meant by "overrated". As in, it's not the big deal people make it out to be.

that's the problem - i agree, there is very little "original" in music these days. this is why i never listen to the radio except for NPR once in a while. when i read "Originality is overrated. If music is done well, it doesn't matter the source or the similarity" all i think of is all the shit top 40 mainstream pop and r&b that has been done over and over to death. this is why i don't listen to the radio or turn on MTV. i'm sick and tired of the same old bullshit music - predicable and safe. it's just not for me.

maybe i did read too much into those three words, but i'm starting to think that "originality" is now open to interpretation, or at least the people defending it's lack of importance want it to be open to interpretation. you yourself admit "that's what he probably meant by overrated", which tells me you're not 100% sure.