experimental music lovers unite!

[risome]

http://www.sevcom.com/
http://www.thelooporchestra.com/
http://www.monolake.de/
http://www.residents.com/
http://wiredlab.ning.com/
Go here for some interesting journeys
cheers Plato from SYIKOM
http://www.youtube.com/syikom

[rachmiel]

depends on how you define music. my vocal trio was doing a concert/workshop for some very young kids a few weeks ago, and when we asked them how they would describe what 'music' is one 8-year-old said: "Noise that someone likes."

And, unfortunately, 8-year old kids don't work as editors for Webster's. As nice as it would be to acknowledge the transience of language and stop accepting commonly held definitions of words, it would cause undesired chaos in human relations. Anyone can make up their own definition for a given word, but when that definition is not shared by anyone else, they're going to have a difficult time expressing themselves effectively. And that's really the only point for having a language in the first place.

i'm so used to thinking of music as "organized sound" (or "sound in time" or even just "sound") that i didn't realize how un-conventional this definition was! i just looked up 'music' in my unabridged dictionary and, sadly, all of its seven or so definitions were very conventional, variants of: sound that expresses emotion through the use of melody, harmony, etc.

[Voidoid Surrealist]

On the other hand, calling it "music" in the first place is disingenuous, because it is decidedly NOT "music".

Sorry, I was not aware that referring to music as music was disingenuous. I'll try and keep that in mind from now on.

[runagate]

I suppose I should answer my own sensei:

what types of experimental music do you listen to?

Extremely experimental pop, prog and free jazz, hip-hop (yes, there's experimental hip-hop!), a little electronica, dub.

who are some of your favorite experimental bands/composers?

Bruno Bartolozzi, Panayiotis Kokoras, Face Candy, dälek, Zorn et al., Laswell/Material/Tabla Beat Science etc., Mike Patton, free & modal jazz, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Prefuse73... I dunno, I listen to a rather arbitrary mix of music, 50% of which comes from KVR and I tend not to differentiate experimental from not.

do you make (compose, perform) experimental music?

Yeah, both. Though I tend to

please share links of experimental music sites you find worthwhile.

Create Digital Music is the only one I know of.

what do you think of the experimental music 'scene' on kvr?

I listen to a giant collection of my weirdo compadres from here. There's plenty of great non-experimentalist discussion here, but about technique and history not much about actual aesthetics, composition, etc.

[mystahr]

The discussion; how indepth it all may go continues to depend on perception. I'll leave tastes out as that is another great variant in this world today.

As said earlier, I have a hard enough time to put my own noodlings into any category, simply because of the lack of reference. When does something become experimental? I have my personal perceptions on this, the next person has a whole different set of rules even though tastes and perceptions might for a large part be common, the standards by which someone categorizes or puts into a like/dislike drawer is totaly unique.

Through the radio I get in contact with an extremely wide field of 'experimentalism' which in turn I try to share to the willing ear (and thankfully there seems to be a growing fan-base, so I'll just continue). I do however find that there is always the 'easy way out' by declaring something outside the spectrum of acceptibility; the easy way out being to stop listening to such and turn away from it. As long as there'll be the tools and rules, someone will try to find a way to disobbey those rules and the proper usage of these tools. Revolution works in the same manner too in that retrospect, untill something becomes more common-grounded. I certainly realize to be working way in the outfield with NTNS and JNN and be that 'mad scientist' john keeps refering me as. So alongside the avant garde, progressive terms I best refer to what I do as Just not Normal.

Either way, this is and will be an ongoing discussion (and I'm not saying that it should stop; do please continue...) and tastes will always differ. I'm just thankful for the fact that they do; it makes all of us human!!

[synthgeek]

what types of experimental music do you listen to?

Depends how far you stretch the "experimental" blanket I guess, but mostly stuff with industrial leanings, and darker stuff in general. I also have a soft spot for found sound & field recording-based stuff, when I'm in the right mood.

who are some of your favorite experimental bands/composers?

Coil, J.G. Thirlwell, Raymond Watts, Download, FSOL, Final, C.P. McDill, Boyd Rice, Muslimgauze, Monstrum Sepsis, Monoid, Autechre, Doofgoblin, J.K. Wiechert, Sonic Area, CyberLotion, Iszoloscope, Synapscape, Tarmvred, Morgenstern, Twinkle, Lith, Empusae, This Morn' Omina

do you make (compose, perform) experimental music?

Yes- that is, I make heavy use of experimentation in my music. And though the elements may not be groundbreakingly new, I don't think anything I do really fits in any given box either.

please share links of experimental music sites you find worthwhile.

http://www.connexionbizarre.net
http://www.noisedir.info/

what do you think of the experimental music 'scene' on kvr?

It's the main thing that's kept me coming back for so long. The ratio of quality music here seems pretty high for an internet forum, and especially among the more experimentally-inclined folks. It also gets me to listen to styles I might not otherwise seek out, which is its own sort of experiment.

[jopy]

Composer Iannis Xenakis in "Towards a Metamusic" (chapter 7 of Xenakis 1971) defined music in the following way:

1. It is a sort of comportment necessary for whoever thinks it and makes it.
2. It is an individual plemora, a realization.
3. It is a fixing in sound of imagined virtualities
4. It is normative, that is, unconsciously it is a model for being or for doing by sympathetic drive.
5. It is catalytic: its mere presence permits internal psychic or mental transformations in the same way as the crystal ball of the hypnotist.
6. It is the gratuitous play of a child.
7. It is a mystical (but atheistic) asceticism. Consequently expressions of sadness, joy, love and dramatic situations are only very limited particular instances.

Yes, right from Wikipedia. I have no shame.

[wavephonic]

I'm curious as to who really decides whether its experimental or not. If I'm experimenting with a sound or technique, is it experimental only to me or does someone else have to make that call when they hear it?

[jopy]

Any definitional discussion eventually comes down to the Wittgenstein/Rosch critique of categories. Categories almost never have strict boundaries, and the problem gets much worse when the boundaries are culturally and socially determined. Defining what is or isn't "music" or "experimental" is obviously (to me at least) extremely culturally and socially bound.

As an example, when Europeans first arrived in Africa some had such trouble processing some of the indigenous music they declared (in their condescending way) that it wasn't music at all or at least that it was a crude prototype of music that would eventually be eliminated once the superior Western model of the day was presented as a contrast. To modern ears, it's obvious that African music is clearly music in every sense of the word, and European cultural music has done more to approximate African music than the other way around.

To argue over whether something is or isn't in the category rapidly becomes a pointless exercise in cultural prejudices with no evidence that will move the perspective of either side, "yes it is," vs. "no it's not." That's not terribly informative or revelatory for anyone. It's more interesting and informative to think of specific prototypes and discuss their elements of similarity to and differences from one another using different terms that do have a clearer definition for those involved.

I suppose in saying that the line of demarcation between experimental vs. non-experimental and music vs. non-music becomes irrelevant. That's pretty damn post-modern, isn't it?

[mystahr]

In addition to jmeier's quote here's one from Cage

THE PRINCIPLE OF FORM WILL BE OUR ONLY CONSTANT CONNECTION WITH THE PAST. ALTHOUGH THE GREAT FORM OF THE FUTURE WILL NOT BE AS IT WAS IN THE PAST, AT ONE TIME THE FUGUE AND AT ANOTHER THE SONATA, IT WILL BE RELATED TO THESE AS THEY ARE TO EACH OTHER

Taken from this writing from 1958
Not per say on the current topic of experimental music, but more describing how music will continually evolve.

PS: this link was shared a long time ago by tetraplan, but I thought it to fit well in here.

[herodotus]

To argue over whether something is or isn't in the category rapidly becomes a pointless exercise in cultural prejudices with no evidence that will move the perspective of either side, "yes it is," vs. "no it's not." That's not terribly informative or revelatory for anyone. It's more interesting and informative to think of specific prototypes and discuss their elements of similarity to and differences from one another using different terms that do have a clearer definition for those involved.

I suppose in saying that the line of demarcation between experimental vs. non-experimental and music vs. non-music becomes irrelevant. That's pretty damn post-modern, isn't it?

I think that 'post-modern' is a silly term, but the overall point is sound.

But the problem with definitions of "Music" is that music is really hard to define well.

I agree that it is foolish for European musicians to condescendingly disparage Afro-Cuban drum music, just as it is foolish for Afro-Cuban drummers to say that European music 'has no rhythm' (and yes, that is an actual quote). But the fact that such cultural misunderstandings can take place tells us that there are major differences between these musical traditions.

What makes it all so confusing is that all musical traditions used to be geographically defined, and that is no longer the case. Music in Bali evolved along it's own lines for centuries. So did the many musical traditions of Africa. So did the music of India. So did the folk musics of eastern Europe and Ireland.

Today, we can easily listen music from all of the above traditions and any others one might think of. We can buy recordings, listen to them, fall in love with them, be influenced by them, become a fanatical devotee of the musicians, all without ever leaving our home towns.

One might say that we will never understand this music without some knowledge of the culture from which it came, but whether or not that is true, that doesn't change the fact that some of us can sing and play along with hundreds of 'songs' (or whatever they are called); that some of us like listening to this music more than any music from our own locale; and that our own music has been irrevocably influenced by these experiences.

None of which makes the word 'music' any easier to define.

Music is simply evolving much faster than our ability to understand it. This has always been the case, but the rate of that evolution has accelerated tremendously in recent years, while our understanding of it is plodding along ever more slowly.

[intel]

None of which makes the word 'music' any easier to define.

I don't know. I don't go in for strict delineations often, but the term "music" is easy enough for me to define. If you can hum along with it, it's music. I think that covers the standard conventions of meter, melody and form, and readily accommodates the wide variety of styles that exist in the world today.

[jopy]

None of which makes the word 'music' any easier to define.

I don't know. I don't go in for strict delineations often, but the term "music" is easy enough for me to define. If you can hum along with it, it's music. I think that covers the standard conventions of meter, melody and form, and readily accommodates the wide variety of styles that exist in the world today.

Ah, now you enter the minefield. "If you can hum along with it" begs the question of whether the humming needs to exhibit a certain subjective quality. You can hum along with any sound, structured or not; whether it sounds right is in the ear of the beholder.

There's a bit of humming in here, is it music by your definition? It certainly is music to some, and certainly isn't music to others (not surprising to see that this very discussion plays out beneath the video).



I reserve judgment as to whether it's in the category of music for me (mostly I think it isn't to my way of grouping things into or out of music), but I do find it compelling; I have a copy of Stimmung so saying it's not music to me hardly means I don't find it to be enjoyable noise.

When I played a copy of Kontakte (a somewhat similar piece by Stockhausen) on my dad's stereo he started shaking his keys and rattling silverware on the counter, saying "listen, now I'm a musician too!" Only after all these years can I come up with the much delayed comeback, "If this is music, perhaps your rattling does make you a musician, but not necessarily a very good one!"

Also an interesting definitional description, again from Stockhausen:

[intel]

I'll check out the link when I get home from work. No YouTube in the office.

[dover666]

hey - anyone not up on my gear - click my sig.. fixed the top link, so it should give u access to the massive clusterfunk that is my box.net account.... dig around in there.. theres music to listen to or remix, vsts, synthedit modules, synthedit patches... all sorts of things to experiment with...