Re: [MMM] aesthetics of "tape" (CD these days) music

>Everyone has an opinion about this. I've heard everything from "I like
>tape music concerts. The lights go dim, there's no visual distractions,
>and it's just me and the music and I can really focus in on it"

Those are cool. I've been to some great ones in San Francisco. But
you need a warm space with bean bag chairs and hopefully exposed
wood somewhere.

>And what could be more @#$%@#$% ridiculous than applauding a pair of
>speakers?!?!?!"

Applause is for the composer if they're there.

>I can see both points of view. I would say that whether people "start
>chatting" or not depends more on the venue than whether or not you're
>playing tape music: if a concert was in a brewery, I'm guessing people
>would chat away, whether you're just playing CDs, or you've got a DJ

Hey, I almost forgot DJs! How $&@$%&% is it to idolize them?

The kind of tape shows I've been to have been the silent, dark kind.
Except for wedding receptions and raves.

>The usual solution is to turn the volume way up so that any "chatting"
>is more like screaming, which adds to the fun fun fun "we're all going
>to get laid tonight" vibe that everyone seems to love about loud bars.

I totally hate that.

>(And by the way: I don't think it's necessarily bad that music is a
>background ambient thing. Many great pieces were written for that
>purpose: virtually all early operas, Mozart divertimenti and such, and
>so on. the idea of "being attentive" only came into being relatively
>recently.

I think the practitioners/listeners of early Indian music were probably
meant to be "attentive", thousands of years ago (if liner notes are to
be believed).

>And I like the idea of having fun chatting with my friends, then once
>in a while noticing, hey this music in the background is groovy stuff!)

I'm not much for it, but some dig it. Some good friends of mine have
a band called the Mood Doculators which aim to do exactly that.

>It's true that multi-channel stuff is great; I just got back from a
>festival in Montreal of 8-channel music (where I had a 19tet piece
>played, incidentally).

Oh, what piece?

>That was a lot of fun. In that case, there's more of a "reason" to
>have a "tape" music concert, since most people don't have a 16-, 10-, 8-,
>or even 4- channel speaker setup in their home.

5.1 is increasingly common, and this is a viable delivery method.
But I'm a big fan of Kurt Bigler's 32-channel setup.

>In any case, I think what has worked pretty well, is to have variety on
>a program, especially in a concert hall: "tape" music interspersed with
>works with dancers, or works with video, or works with live instruments
>and electronics, or what-have-you.

I personally don't like dancers with tape, or tape music in a formal
concert hall setting. Then again, I don't like any music in a
formal concert hall setting!

-Carl