Phrasing in electronic music and the curse of predictability

[jancivil]

jancivil, I honestly think you have too little experience with music outside YOUR comfort zone to understand that even though it is of course possible to make subtle rhythmic accents that go beyond the basic framework, that's not often how it is done.

it isn't? on what planet? I have had country bands, I have rock 'n roll, and one very accessible bubblegum pop tune. I like 4/4 when 4/4 turns out to be the idea. All you're doing is being reactive, you don't know me, or my music probably. Do you imagine I started out to be super progressive intellectual musician? I started off playing drums to Monkees records. I got my ear together picking things off rock records. My beginnings at guitar were involved with blues and blues-informed rock. I'm comfortable in any zone because I obtained the chops to be.

The people I would ever be interested to work with can manage to be subtle with rhythm, whether they're a super educated horn player or a pedal steel player that never read a note. I'm amazed to see this. I don't think there is anything honest about this language frankly. NB:

I didn't ever assume 4/4 as the norm btw (although it is). I didn't default to 4/4. it was an example and I happen to write in 4/4 most of the time, either because I'm corrupted by western culture or because it is the most natural and mathematically intuitive pulse, its prevalence irreducible to historic coincidence. it shouldn't be too hard to see (even in the barebone idealistic perspective you use while criticizing others' observations) that alteration of it is more likely to be a pose than melodic or rhythmic innovation within its scope is. you make an innovation within the system's theoretical or explicit boundaries and its often overlooked, but on the other hand people who see it will see it untainted by attention-seeking mannerism. they will notice the lack of pretense, the refusal to compromise music just to gain more praise.

You contradict yourself inside of one sentence. you need 4/4 to be default so bad you pose a bogus mathematical, and a specious historical neccessity. It's a cultural hegemony, and you haven't got outside it evidently. And you don't seem to have much history to work with. Your extreme overconfidence only amplifies your display of ignorance.

it's not the deviation from norm in itself that OFFENDS me. it's the deviation on a very predictable plane, easily definable, easily verifiable as "objectively" different - so often lauded by a public that won't acknowledge the subversive. quite simply it is cowardice. yes, you can make a nice 3+2+2+3+2+3 or whatever. but as a clear theoretical concept (as opposed to, say, some special melodic pattern) the alteration of time signatures is bound to be used as a means to an end quite a lot, not just appear spontaneously.

I'm not criticizing your observations, I am criticizing that you make unnecessary and bogus conclusions where you decide the specific problem is a general problem.
THiS IS A MAJOR FALLACY.

So, some people do this and more to the point aren't terrifically skilled at it. There are examples that annoy me too. But, you have decided that this is what people that are more interested in rhythm than you evidence ARE. You go for the convenient rather than rigorous, honest argument.

You have the actual proposition here: means to an end is dishonest and necessarily the end is suspect. There are cases where it is done deliberately; this is not however different in quality than a decision such as 'this could work as a waltz'.
One is not evidencing the virtue 'uncompromising' by sticking to duple time per se. This is pompous bloviating.

It is not 'bound to be' anything except in your straw man. In Indian classical music, it is normal. But of course, and we'll see this presently, I'm an arrogant poseur for even evidencing interest in that kind of thing.

I'd rather stay in my honest comfort zone than artificially expanding it in hopes of scoring credibility. if you are egoistic and self-conscious, credibility means comfort and of course taste diversification is credible. you can listen to your gamelan and your renaissance revivalist and serialism and never gain anything beyond the mechanical and the "realization" that whoah music sure can sound in lots of ways. your taste and judgment is tautological and redundant and so the game is over. either that or simply say "I don't understand this foreign musical language and probably never will other than as kitsch. most respectful would be benign ignorance... then I can carry on writing music in my language".

Here's the problem: YOU have the limitation of understanding; anyone that does not is suspect and needs correction.

It's your tautology when it's you writing it. You have a completely unnecessary dichotomy: Your virtuous uncompromising dedication to sticking to a comfort zone, vs the person that equally doesn't get it but has a glimpse of it and a need to obtain credibility. This is revealing of your approaches to life, and not mine for instance.

You do what you like, it is of no moment to me. But you're going around bashing a straw man in your emotional distress ['quite simply it is cowardice' ]behind encountering people that are more curious than you, at whatever level. You come off as a reactionary philistine, and your abuse of the lingo shows more ass crack the more you go at it.

Instead of reaching for vocabulary, you could stand to try and reason something through.

[jancivil]

Progressive rock is almost by definition anti-pop.

almost by definition. But not quite. So the definition of 'progressive' you want is 'anti-pop'.

so whenever someone, McCartney, Lennon, deviated and thought to do something different than the norm, or when Mozart's vocabulary exceeded his peers (most of the time actually) their impetus was not in the positive but the negative. Everyone has to take as their basis the most average normal thing, to compare their efforts to.

In reality, Yes, for instance started off quite following the Beatles as a creative pop band; an extension of Beatles area of innovation in pop. In the 60's, 70's creativity was not suspect necessarily I guess.

this would be an even sadder world than it is if reality conformed to your construction of it. Creativity is too upsetting isn't it.

[ghettosynth]

Ghettosynth, you have single-handedly turned this discussion into a mean, destructive rant. I was reluctant to write this, but your posts are too cruel to ignore. I am sure you will now attack me personally, even though you've totally destroyed any reason I would ever want to return to read it.

So I'm going to take that to mean that you don't actually have any cites.

You've repeatedly demonstrated in this topic that you are literally delusional.

You seem to have a problem sticking to the conversation and supporting your prejudice driven points with facts. Calling someone delusional is nothing but a personal attack, funny, no?

Let me point out to you, that the mute button is over to the left.

[jancivil]

Could be an observation of something abundantly evident.

[ghettosynth]

I will still visit kvr but I spend less time in any serious discussion here -
pretty much just meat and potatoes now.

I've noticed that you can't stand having your opinion challenged. I've seen it now in multiple threads. You overgeneralize your expertise. I pointed out to you that at least one scholar, and frankly, I've heard this often, finds significant portions of the 70s as tedious. You asserted that you've "never" heard that said about music of that era. Don't you now want to admit that perhaps your exposure was limited?

[ghettosynth]

jancivil, I honestly think you have too little experience with music outside YOUR comfort zone to understand that even though it is of course possible to make subtle rhythmic accents that go beyond the basic framework, that's not often how it is done.

it isn't? on what planet? I have had country bands, I have rock 'n roll, and one very accessible bubblegum pop tune. I like 4/4 when 4/4 turns out to be the idea.

All of course, in your comfort zone.

You have virtually no experience with underground dance music, which, is not in your comfort zone. amiright?

[ghettosynth]

if you're in a trance you're not going to be counting.... "Hey, that was only 12!

so if some improperly initiated person at the board introduces the error - of variation? like what, a triplet? - into this 'all about the trance' strict duple subdivision, the dancer's visual presentation (during a trance state, s/he is concerned with what s/he looks like to the crowd), this 'free form anticipation' is thrown so badly off it stops this flow in its tracks? whew.

So you don't know the answer to the question? You've never been there, it's clear, it's not your experience and you have no connection to what I'm talking about. You don't dance for pleasure in the manner that I'm talking about, in the manner that was associated with a significant portion of recent pop history. You have no idea what kind of a "trance state" it is that one finds themselves in or how one behaves while in it, or how they move in and out of it. It's really obvious that you simply don't have that experience. It's not surprising at all, really, that you don't like house music in general.

you seem to be living in a construct of language (ie., bullshit). Which seems to function to make you seem sehr clever as you seek - and invent - problems with people that enjoy things [rhythm qua rhythm] you need to dismiss.

Enjoy what you like. The fact remains, whether it gets your knickers in a twist or not, that most underground dance music doesn't contain the types of surprises that the op finds "delightful" because most people who like that type of music disagree that those kinds of changes are delightful.

That said, there are plenty of examples that do. Just because the exposure of a few people in this thread is limited doesn't mean that there aren't examples. I've seen such records go by unnoticed, and I've seen them clear the dance floor.

All you demonstrate, by this great expenditure of verbiage, is that you don't like music to change up very much.

I can imagine that's all you are capable of taking from it. If you ever decide to broaden your view and embrace underground dance music for what it is as opposed to what your uneducated opinion thinks that it is, you might find that I'm saying something slightly different.

[jancivil]

I see this 'the body knows when it's off from the 32', and it just seems like some lingo in an argument to me. 32 in a grid is an artifice you have likely from the grid in the sequencer. you are at the same time posing this 'trance state' concept, the visuals the dancer is generating with the lights or something, and this knowledge of an artificial construction of the time which is dividing by two to a certain resolution of the grid.

I'm out of a milieu of hippies taking acid and dancing with abandon. I know from trance-intent out of Morrocan percussion ensembles. I like to dance to what moves me to dance. I like to try and meet syncopation and complexity with steps. Cf., Sherman Hemsley [George Jefferson], a fantastic dancer, liked to dance to Gentle Giant et al...
You OTOH seem to present a tight-assed person doing a number of things that don't gibe. You appear to expect that your opponent never danced and you're going to be able to get over with this lingo. I think you're bullshitting. I see these pretty desperate attempts to justify your argumentation, and the entire argument by reduction I can pose like this at the end of the day: "I require four on the floor to keep my groove on". It isn't any good to tell someone they don't have your experience with dancing. You don't know. So how do you like my characterization of your dancer? Not so nice? So you could refrain from it as well.

taken as a whole, over time, this smacks of a layer of self-convincing that gets to seem like
deluding oneself. I don't think people generally are going to be much swayed by it.

___________________________________________________________________________________


the first time I was exposed to 3/4 was the first little group I tried to form out of putting ads in the newspaper. I was eleven. we were reading through lead sheets like you get at the music instruments store. I had only ever practiced 4/4 or 2/4 beats. So I had to figure out what specifically to do in three to the bar.

a couple of years later I had to figure out another thing 'outside of my comfort zone' in real time. My father thought to put me in a situation onstage with seasoned jazz musicians to get me some realtime schooling. they called some ballad I didn't know, in slow 5/4 that required playing with brushes.

around a year or so after that I encountered serious complexity in time when I went to see the movie Monterey Pop, my first exposure to ICM, Pundit Ravi Shankar with the legendary drummer Ustad Alla Rakha. I was home! I am part Indian on my father's side.

I and a friend who was a songwriter - big John Lennon and Beatles follower - formed a group over time and his influence grew through Beatles to particularly Yes and early Genesis. So eventually we had some arrangements that changed up times and tempo some. He wasn't a theory person, I had the basics from how I came up reading out of a jazz environment and so forth. We wanted to be clever, sure but at the end of the day we were trying new things as we encountered them. His compositions were based in lyrics and he searched for chords and rhythms (he was a bit of a drummer as well) to convey the words; it was my job to make them compelling to the instrumentalist aspect of the group. So there is a path for me where I picked things up as a matter of course.
After some training on the guitar I felt impelled to start writing. I had a fair amount of exposure to music over my first decade or so, Alla Raka Khan to Le Sacre du Printemps, Zappa, on top of jazz so I liked rhythmic thought a lot!

as far as Sendy's 'this is getting to be a lot of Us vs Them', well it is! there is no good reason to try and make people that like something more to happen than four to a bar seem as they are engaged in something deceitful and "cowardly". There is a color of resentment; there is often this color when a musician dares to say something to an EDM noob here. To wit:

You, Mr Ghettosynth have engaged in such tricky argumentation, for instance to twist my I would think innocuous, 'get some experience with learning tunes' expanding on it by 'the people with the melody gene got it by osmosis, they were surrounded with music', so get more exposed, into the silly 'singing with your mom' riff... which you actually reiterated weeks later like this is a trope now. Fine, so what you want out of 'EDM' is not melody. However I only replied to a thread asking about 'theory for melody'. I have no reason to restrict my remarks to your aesthetic. I do not think advising people to get out more is bad for ANYONE. I think that 'get involved more deeply with music' is a GOOD thing. You disagree with such vehemence and proselytizing for these ideas; and others getting really heated trying to justify avoiding involvement with music on the for-real side? Sorry, there is no Kumbaya moment coming here.

You seem to need to restrict your own purview; good for you, doesn't take any skin off anyone. But after a point, you have got to be kidding with these reaches.


As you imagine what I think or do, guy?

"I can imagine that ['you don't like music to change up very much'] is all you are capable of taking from it."

That will be restricted by definition to your imagination. I don't think you could invent me as a character in your movie with your imagination, not by light years. I OTOH have your words to reply to. (you're telling us about 4/4 and dividing by eight as something the subtle dancer will reject; in the frame of in a trance and dancing for show - in the context of hear-hereing a lad that thinks exceeding four time has got to mean a poseur. Sorry, there is nothing amazing about your description of 'underground dancing' so far. I'm not there, granted but what you wrote sounds kinda rigid and pose-y to me. Keep working on that story though.) My definition of 'very much' is pretty obviously not yours. I don't object to what you do or what you think about it. But you are arguing with people to make a wider argument in this thread and this thread has considerable backstory, don't kid me.

You are fond of writing up the right straw man to beat on though, aren't you.

[Gamma-UT]

Could you link a few? I enjoy reading what other people have to say about composition/theory, but I'm increasingly finding this section of KVR too infuriating to read.

Music theory subforums have a tendency to descend into madness no matter where they are. I don't think KVR is particularly unusual.

FWIW for Sendy, Mark Butler's Unlocking the Groove might be worth a look - his schtick (which I don't entirely agree with, because some of his examples would be lost in the context of the DJ's switching and mixing of tracks during a session) is that metrical surprise and dissonance are key parts of dance music even though everything is laid on a four on the floor beat (largely to prevent people falling over at any change points). Page 100 looks at 808 State's Cubik as an example - it's available in the Google preview, which is why I mentioned it, although there are others in the book that look at Jeff MIlls' Jerical and Underworld's Cups.

[jancivil]

jancivil, I honestly think you have too little experience with music outside YOUR comfort zone to understand that even though it is of course possible to make subtle rhythmic accents that go beyond the basic framework, that's not often how it is done.

it isn't? on what planet? I have had country bands, I have rock 'n roll, and one very accessible bubblegum pop tune. I like 4/4 when 4/4 turns out to be the idea.

All of course, in your comfort zone.

You have virtually no experience with underground dance music, which, is not in your comfort zone. amiright?

this is not relevant to this point in the thread. You're certainly going to be right about your imagined me.

Do you think 4/4 and as little harmonic interest, and by your terms zero melodic interest is somehow challenging to any musician? NB: I have quite a bit of ambient music, which is pure texture evolving slowly. I liked to dance. I am not your straw man, your imagination would never arrive at me.

The point of discussion was musical content, time changes that are measurable, wasn't it? In the context of your high-fiving that guy's rant about the clear poseur-itis inherent in exploring teh 'time signatures'.

dancing to music is not alien to me and wasn't a half century ago. you have to pose dancing to a simple beat in the most esoteric terms to try and score points in an impossible argument? It looks after a while like such a constructed thing. Your EDM, now 'underground dance music' as a mysterious realm & hard to grasp is kind of out there in deludo-land to me, as you present it.

[jancivil]

at least one scholar, and frankly, I've heard this often, finds significant portions of the 70s as tedious. You asserted that you've "never" heard that said about music of that era. Don't you now want to admit that perhaps your exposure was limited?

exposure to journalism you agree with? I'll cop to that! I try to avoid that kind of bullshit. Punk rock will deliver us from the bloated arena rock experience WOOT.

What was the actual salient idea as per the thread again?

[jancivil]

You don't dance for pleasure in the manner that I'm talking about, in the manner that was associated with a significant portion of recent pop history. You have no idea what kind of a "trance state" it is that one finds themselves in or how one behaves while in it, or how they move in and out of it. It's really obvious that you simply don't have that experience. It's not surprising at all, really, that you don't like house music in general.

I don't like cookie cutter boring metronomic music. There is house music I find fascinating. which I have actually mentioned here with a little detail.

I notice the goalposts keep moving here.

If you ever decide to broaden your view and embrace underground dance music for what it is as opposed to what your uneducated opinion thinks that it is, you might find that I'm saying something slightly different.

I replied to your words. I don't think it's anything until it's before me. I would not find that experience anything but really & truly boring as you describe it. the point was rhetorical, my questions rhetorical questions to illustrate the wider argument; I only entered the discussion to argue for 'more rhythm' after the idea of more rhythm was abused some. I know you hate that and want everything to be about this little zone you reside in. Sendy brought up a little bit of phrasing over the bar in the context of dancing and we see where it went. It's "not delightful" to people that consciously and unconsciously reject anything that isn't resolved within a bar of 4/4? But this rejection is such a subtle thing!
I sure wouldn't want to end up with my body conditioned to reject <phrasing cross the bar of 4 beats> so automatically...


You telling me to broaden my view to embrace what you have presented as a very narrow substrate of electronic music, synthesizer-reliant music with a beat you can dance or trance to, you with the severe and insular POV is I think ironic. I have no interest in disabusing you of that per se, but you are trying to make it more in terms of the musical content than it is. It's kind of bizarre.

[qa2pir]

Instead of reaching for vocabulary, you could stand to try and reason something through.

instead of constantly hinting at your own life experience and some wisdom never apparent in your treatment of others, you could stand to reason something through.

I have told you the gist of my argument and you haven't replied to that. I'll say it again: innovation by means of explicitly defined, conventional theoretical devices isn't actual innovation because you still play by the rules. you let them control and participate in what you're expressing through your music, instead of accepting tradition as a necessary formal framework and going on with your creativity and questioning, as you say, the cultural hegemony from within. formal innovation is like a revolting child. probably much like you picture me. but guess what:

quote
I AIN'T YOUR STRAWMAN I AIN'T YOUR STRAWMAN I AIN'T YOUR STRAWMAN
unquote

also your mathematical intuition is severely impaired if you can't grasp the ease, symmetry and potency of 2-multiples. do you think sex is a social construct as well?

finally if I hear "LINGO" again I won't bother. I'm not a native english speaker - that doesn't disqualify my opinion, so please cut it.

[jancivil]

Instead of reaching for vocabulary, you could stand to try and reason something through.

instead of constantly hinting at your own life experience and some wisdom never apparent in your treatment of others, you could stand to reason something through.

Wow, you really have mastered the art of I'm rubber, you're glue, what bounces off me sticks to you.

I have told you the gist of my argument and you haven't replied to that.

The hell I haven't, you just don't like what was said.

I'll say it again: innovation by means of explicitly defined, conventional theoretical devices isn't actual innovation because you still play by the rules. you let them control and participate in what you're expressing through your music, instead of accepting tradition as a necessary formal framework and going on with your creativity and questioning, as you say, the cultural hegemony from within. formal innovation is like a revolting child. probably much like you picture me.

<Formal innovation is a bad thing!> Do you imagine in this fevered state that the adjectives you attach to the statment make this seem clever? It's idiotic.

I do picture you as a child! Do scream [STRAW MAN!] some more! Do you hope that gets rid of the fact you're relying on them? This is impudent insolent acting out, with this excessive LINGO as if it makes you seem intelligent. It's, with no fear of exaggeration, I think THE most pretentous crap I have even seen here.
'you still play by the rules'. you mean convention is always a factor? Who said that innovation is necessarily about defying all convention? That would be you! To really go into it, we would have to look at specific, concrete cases. There are in reality people, eg. Varese, that arguably tossed aside convention. We'd have to make precise definitions of terms to be serious about this. You don't have much to go on to talk about things on this level; this pretense to an aesthetic is a joke. You have nothing more than I can see than some unexamined premises and an inchoate knowledge of terms.

This is more evidence that you cannot manage an intelligent argument. You cannot expect to if you do not understand how to delineate the general and the specific; this is fundamental in making an actual argument. You're just making assertions out of your own unexamined premises, wildly.

You're just talking to yourself here anyway. You need to define 'innovation' in terms exactly convenient as to get rid of it, and it isn't a factor in the discussion except you seem to intensely dislike the notion. You're chasing your own tail.

You're incoherent here: going by convention is good except when you don't like it: the convention of 4/4, as you stick to it as a comfort zone, is uncompromising and courageous in its honesty. If one uses the convention of say 3s and 2s arriving at an odd number, it is arbitrary and offensively pretentious. The convention itself cannot bear the attributes of a quality, let alone moral quality. This is INSANE. You have a lot of five dollar words, but what you reveal you do not have is experience with the lingo. You're thrashing about really, by elaborate but empty sentences trying to fake it.

I do not at any time approach my work by these criteria. I just get on with it. I do not have these abstractions in front of the process. I have a lot of fun and the greatest of ease creating music. Don't hate me because I'm beautiful!

also your mathematical intuition is severely impaired if you can't grasp the ease, symmetry and potency of 2-multiples.

What I actually said was that 4/4 is not the default except to someone such as you; and you particularly out of your culturally determined, and I'll now complete the statement, narrow and ignorant world view. You're like a mosquito with that desperate try.

Theoretical devices? You don't quite know what theory is I guess. how is 7/8 more 'theory-like' than 4/4? Because you don't know what to do with it? All 'theory' is is a way to describe what's been observed to work, to convey how it works, in consistent and coherent lingo. I'll say it again if it will dissuade you from further nonsense. LINGO! Fvck thee off forthwith.

I gave my experience not because it's special but as the example I know. To illustrate how arriving at a like for complex time can be pretty normative behavior actually.

How do you expect to be received with these bizarre and clueless rants? you seem to expect your ass to be kissed. These rants are unhinged frankly.

[ghettosynth]

I see this 'the body knows when it's off from the 32', and it just seems like some lingo in an argument to me. 32 in a grid is an artifice you have likely from the grid in the sequencer. you are at the same time posing this 'trance state' concept, the visuals the dancer is generating with the lights or something, and this knowledge of an artificial construction of the time which is dividing by two to a certain resolution of the grid.

Again, the key part here is that you haven't had the experience in any serious form. You want to argue, but you don't have, shall we say "a point of entry."

I never once mentioned lights, and seriously, you playing the victim card?