KVR Audio

TristezaOrange · Post by **TristezaOrange** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 11:06 pm

ZombyWoof wrote:I've always enjoyed Steve Reich and his studies into structure.
'Music for 18 Musicians' and 'The Desert Music' get a lot of play here.

+1

Hitch · Post by **Hitch** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 11:47 pm

Rachmaninov, Shostakovich and Prokofiev are chockfull of gorgeous melodies, harmonies and thumping good rhythms. Most of Britten is very accessible and Vaughan Williams wrote strings you can wallow in. Bartok is wonderfully quirky. If you're looking for something "modern" that will grab your ear, try:

Glass - Mishima
John Adams - Nixon in China (get a highlights disc at first)
Gorecki - Symphony No.3

Don't forget Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. It's so good that it almost killed off classical music. Written in 1913, would you believe, it has a few bars of orchestral funk that inspired half the cinema soundtracks of the 60s and 70s.

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 12:23 am

Music such as Stockhausen or Boulez, has a precondition of a musical education, and even a certain amount of intellectual acumen.

It's music qua music, some of it is anyway. Cage was a philosopher at the end of the day. But when you have people making music to explore the potentials in the way musical sound, or musical architecture might have, it's going to not appeal much to people trying to decorate their time with something which reinforces their concept of who they are.
For example, when you cite genres such as 'black metal', these are styles which exist as a kind of wallpaper for a lifestyle. It sounds the way it does for you to decorate your time based on some things you believe about how you fit into the world, and something you want to project to the rest of the people, who are 'like you'. It's tied to something external to the way it sounds, or any purer examination of its form or its shape. Punk music, looks like it has these type of clothes, or rock 'n roll has rock 'n roll clothes. Classical per se has a tuxedo. Or they had to have the powdered wigs.

You're going to get more out of music if you forget about everything else, all the externals.
Listen to a train whistle. Listen to it trying to get more out of your everyday routine, try to soak up what's actually there. Then you can listen to it in a cultural context; blues music, rock 'n roll, heard that train whistle, heard the sound, heard some new chords in it, heard the soul of American in it, got some rhythm off the train track and put that lonesome whistle cry with it, and did something with it. It was noise to lot of their parents and such like who wanted it to sound like the pap they knew from.

Listen to the birds. They don't do anything much but music, all day long. They're making "noise" - but they're really jamming. They hear and they sing, there's nothing about a fashion or a thing they need to do to look cool, it's pure.

I say, do this thing. Listen. Drop all the other stuff you're tying music down with, listen to music nakedly. Any music.

Boulez et al is an 'advanced' vocabulary. Or, it's a foreign language... Here's an analogy: consider that you probably don't understand a Cantonese speaker at all. They understand each other just fine. To understand a language, you have to consider the language on its own terms, not how it fits into the one you're already speaking.

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 6:28 pm

http://www.whybirdssing.com/

you might be interested in this guy jan.
havent read this particular book, or any of his to be honest.

but i became aware of him at a comedy gig, the comedian used his recordings with bugs as intro music.

afreshcupofjoe · Post by **afreshcupofjoe** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 6:54 pm

TristezaOrange wrote:
ZombyWoof wrote:I've always enjoyed Steve Reich and his studies into structure.
'Music for 18 Musicians' and 'The Desert Music' get a lot of play here.
+1

+1 again.

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 6:58 pm

vurt, you GOTTA hear this guy, you may already know him, URS LEIMBURGER.

I have never been so blown away by someone on an instrument:

one day I was at the U of Arizona, waiting for the library to open, just after dawn. Burned a bowl, thanks to our friend there. There are a lot of birds in the desert, or you just can hear the birds better for some reason. There is more emptiness, space.

there was this 'cacophony' of birdsongs, in this great panorama of sound, and I started to focus on the interplay. It really was awesome. There was a mockingbird, who had the range of copping all the, everybody's licks. These birds are just jamming, all day long, they don't know what it is maybe, it's just total impulse I think; but All_Day_Long, you get to get your chops together! There were enough birds so that statistically it could be a WHILE before you got anything recognizable as repetition, in any literal sense. So, it's free jazz.

Little tiny birdies, are on a faster timeline than slower beings like us, so you can miss a lot, you have to listen a certain way.

I'm listening to your link now. Notice, how hip is the bird here! AWESOME! thanx

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 7:05 pm

yeah, these bird rhythms....

Messiaen tried to notate a lot of this, but to me it's good luck with that. there is no beat. where they repeat a lick, it's in free time.

but, there are mockingbirds in the city who will go for the cell phone sound they hear, and there are ones who'll do a straight beat 'cause of boombox exposure.

robogone · Post by **robogone** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 7:18 pm

jancivil wrote:Music such as Stockhausen or Boulez, has a precondition of a musical education, and even a certain amount of intellectual acumen.

Not necessarily so. We've done this whole musical/intellectual elitism thing to death - no one needs a musical education or intelligence to decide whether they like music or not.

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 1:22 am

well, the chances are it sounds good to just anybody, isn't great. there is one thing I know by KS which is accessible as 'pretty music'. Boulez, wasn't having any. There are felicities in Boulez I find quite pretty, but if 'pretty' means strictly from Brahms lullaby or Over the Rainbow, it might not make it for you.

A musical education can be had by listening. If all you listen to is your comfort level, you won't really 'educate' your ear. It may be elitist to say so, but it's the truth.

robogone · Post by **robogone** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 1:34 am

Well you're on your own if you're going there, but I doubt you'll find that many people that will support your elitism. People have tried it before and the only thing you're going to do is piss people off.

xybre · Post by **xybre** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 2:01 am

ZombyWoof wrote:It sounds better when you wear a black turtleneck.

You mean you have to cut off the circulation to your brain?

robojam wrote:
jancivil wrote:Music such as Stockhausen or Boulez, has a precondition of a musical education, and even a certain amount of intellectual acumen.
Not necessarily so. We've done this whole musical/intellectual elitism thing to death - no one needs a musical education or intelligence to decide whether they like music or not.

I agree with Jan to a point, I'm not saying anything about the mentioned artists/composers, just this:

Some people can appreciate something by just listening to it without any prior knowledge whatsoever.

Many can not. They only appreciate music that they've been conditioned to appreciate.

Some music I did not *fully* appreciate, or indeed actively disliked, became more palatable when I knew *what* to appreciate. When I learn the artistry behind it, or when I noticed the little changes in tone or the little samples throughout, etc.

Its no one-size-fits-all argument, there's a wide degree of detuning in the unison of human psyches and opinions.

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 2:05 am

well, comfort levels are important to all of us. I'm not that uncomfortable with being labeled whatever, an elitist or someone that can piss you off.

The 'j'accuse':'elitist!' kind of smacks of a political POV. Kind of sounds like it intends to enforce an imagined equality.

Not everybody cares the same amount about music.

Caring more, having more of a higher level of curiosity, listening more deeply, isn't equal to not demonstrating these attributes.

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 2:12 am

You don't even have to go into, 'Boulez' or something to look at 'educating your ear' a certain way.

Elmore James. A lot of people listen to that, who know as much or more about how music works, and say: 'he's doing the same thing every time', the same lick. Where there are people more in tune with particular felicities of Elmore James who recognize the details in it, and will talk about this take versus that.

They're 'elitist' in a certain way.

The people on an audio sort of forum who'll discuss mastering, can tell more than most people, certain things about the physical quality of the sound, because they care more about it. They would also have to be 'elitist'.

robogone · Post by **robogone** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 2:14 am

jancivil wrote:The 'j'accuse':'elitist!' kind of smacks of a political POV. Kind of sounds like it intends to enforce an imagined equality.

No, not politics, just that I don't like musical snobbery.

I certainly don't think the Zola-esque phrasing lessens the elistism in any way.

james0tucson · Post by **james0tucson** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 2:53 am

jancivil wrote:
one day I was at the U of Arizona, waiting for the library to open, just after dawn. ...

there was this 'cacophony' of birdsongs, in this great panorama of sound, and I started to focus on the interplay. It really was awesome.

I listened to those very birds, every day, for quite a few years, often in that very spot. There are a lot of really interesting acoustic spaces on that campus. Where I think you were, has an underground courtyard that resonates from up top. At the other end of the grassy mall, where the museums are, there's a huge lawn with a flowerbed and across the drive from that is a round pillared cenotaph that I've always wanted to IR.

20th century 'classical'music