microdoodling

Haverstick here...this post has been brewing for a while...let me say
that it is not inspired by anything I've read here at all, but may
overlap in places with some things others have said. The deal is this;
I am a musician first, theorist second, and my approach to other tunings
is from a very practical viewpoint: I want to make some music that kicks
ass, and has some substance to it...the MUSIC is first, the theory of
the tuning system follows. Thus, my dilemma...over the last 7 years,
I have heard a lot of music in non 12 tunings, but much of it, I hate
to say, is NOT happening by my standards of what a baaad musician is,
or should be...in other words, microdoodling. Basically, a lot of
what I have heard sounds like theorists who are demonstrating their
theories on musical instruments, rather than musicians letting her
rip...the dreaded word "academic" seems appropriate here. The sad
part, though, is that much of the non 12 music I have heard I will
not play for anyone...I am concerned that this sort of dry doodling
will do more to drive folks away from "microtonality" than it will
to draw them in...now, since I have a mission in life to help end
the reign of 12 eq as the dominant tuning, this is very frustrating
to me...I WANT to hear my fellow microdudes playing their asses off,
but this seems to be rare in the field, with some notable exceptions,
of course.
In fact, just recently, a fellow microtonalist (who IS killer) told
me that he would not play, for his own friends, a CD he appeared on
as sideman for a wellknown microtonal composer because it sucked..
I agreed wholeheartedly with this assessment, since I think this CD
is awful...yet, the gentleman in question is revered in some circles
as a major talent...I think it's a case of the Emperor's new clothes
again...look, I came up in a hard school, and was blessed to meet
and be taught by some genius who could cut you to shreds and leave
you bleeding on the floor...but, you DID profit by it if you got the
message and went home and practiced...and I did just that, and got
my chops way up (and I still practice). Yes, there are many genius
level personalities in the tuning firld, but there is a big gap
between the level of the theories and the level of expertise on the
actual playing field.
There are a couple of areas here that are at fault...1. there seems
to be a very low level of just plain technical skills when it comes
to actually playing an instrument...I actually think my7 year old
daughter's noodlings on her 12 tone mini keyboard are as interesting
as a lot of the stuff I've heard by the microdoodlists...guys, just
cause one plays in a cool tuning doesn't mean it's gonna hold water
unless you can play your axe...sorry, and I do not mean to insult
anyone here...2...I've also noticed a terrible lack of synthesizer
programming skills as well...cheesy tones and patches seem to be the
norm in the microdoodling realm...a lack of imaginationseems to be the problem here. and 3. a real serious lack of compo-
sitional skills as well. By this< i mean that in a lot of the pieces
I hear, there seems to be a basic idea presented, which is often
not bad, but then it goes nowhere, other than a few minutes of sort
of, well, doodling around, and then out...I'm left saying, "go on, develop those ideas!" Oops, my service is going to cut me off...I will
post more later...but, here's the remedy to microdoodling: PRACTICE
YOUR AXES, AND LEARN TO PLAY WELL, AND THEN YOUR IDEAS WILL HAVE MORE
SUBSTANCE...make the music as powerful as your theories, and then we
can take over the world...thanks...Hstick

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Date: Sun, 1 Dec 1996 22:58:31 -0800
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