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Valuable Experiences

🔗Gary Morrison <71670.2576@...>

11/5/1995 11:12:32 AM
I just picked up Martin Bartlett's "Pythagoras' Ghost", and another CD.
There was a contrast between the two that I'd like to get people thinking, or
perhaps talking, about here.

I think that those of us who put out small-run xenharmonic CDs and cassettes
have a big problem. We're not thinking enough about the whole impact of our
music on various possible audiences. And we're underestimating the enormity of
the task of putting out a CD.

Pythagoras' Ghost had a fair variety of timbres, tempi, and styles. But more
generally, and of utmost importance, parts of it linger in my memory, and thus
make me want to hear the CD again. (It was, however, on my opinion, weak on
memorable melodies and musical drama.)

The other CD, however, was not a memorable performance. About all I can
remember from it is the basic character of the two or three timbres on it. It
sounded like somebody came up with a tuning, built an instrument to that tuning,
and then doodled around in front of a DAT deck for a couple of evenings. I am
absolutely 100% sure that a whole lot more work than that went into it, but that
sort of behind-the-scenes stuff is not audible to the listener.

Nothing about it makes me want to "keep coming back". What I could hear of
the tuning was perhaps interesting, but the timbres were pretty basic, there
were very few (if any) catchy melodies, no waves of increasing and decreasing
action, tension, or drama in the music, little variety of tempo or timbre,
almost nothing interesting in the stereo spectrum, and most of the tracks I
could stop in the middle with very little sense that that piece was incomplete.

I believe this to be a big problem. Our music doesn't need these things to
meet the definition of music, nor to qualify as good music. That's not the
concern here. The concern here is that it needs those things to get attention.
When I'm at home scanning across the spines of several hundred CDs in my
collection, why should I think to play that one when it has so few memorable
qualities? Perhaps to refresh my memory as to why I haven't played it in two
years?

Why do I believe this to be a problem? To some of you I'm sure that that's
obvious. But others take a more ... "non-formalistic" I suppose ... attitude
toward music: "This is ART, not TV evangelism", they'll say, or "this is
journey of exploration and experimentation - to find new musical resources; the
last place I want my music to end up is in some teenager's top-40 list", or even
"it's their CD; if people want to turn off my music in the middle of a track
that's their prerogative".

Well then let me ask you this then: Why exactly did you pay about $2000 to
put it on CD if you didn't care whether people think it bears repeated
listening? If these are experiments for personal enlightenment, then why bother
publishing them at all beyond cassette copies to a few other explorers with
similar interests? And if you don't care whether people want to hear it over
and over, then why make them pay $15 or a CD?

Now don't anybody out there get me wrong on this: I don't claim to have any
blockbuster CDs out, or that when my 88CET CD does come out, that people will
love it. But I am confident of one thing: At least MOST of that CD's
purchasers' will conclude that I at least TRIED - successfully or not - to make
it memorable. Am I implying that this composer didn't work hard on that CD?
No. Please! Not for a moment! My point is that giving your audience a
experience they'll treasure has more to do with what you set out to accomplish
than how hard you work at accomplishing it.


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