the sound of a distant horn...

As the 20th century gradually recedes into the distance and music
inches its way out onto the 21st century stage, I'm curious what some
folks might see as future developments or courses that music might --
or even should -- take in the coming years.

While I'm pretty sure this won't be a very popular sentiment, it seems
to that for the last 15 years or so there's been more genuine sonic
adventure and DIY rule breaking/bending going on in the average (not
to mention the exceptional) hip-hop tune than there has been in any of
the most up to the minute cutting edge of either contemporary jazz or
classical... Why? Well for one, there's an endless amount of elbowroom
for exciting new sounds encoded into the very DNA of the music. And
vital, viable new sounds force the new upon the old...

I really feel, in my own dreams and whatnot, a huge need for new
instruments. To take a spin through any one of the EMI compilation CDs
is to cast an ear into a world of possibilities so fraught with
stunning potential that it's positively downright scary! Like it or
not, musical structures kowtow to interface... music grows up around
the instruments that avail itself to it. The instruments we got are by
and large lovely, but mass production has imparted a sort of
monopolistic hue over the whole affair; and nowhere is this more
omnipresent than it is with fixed-pitch instruments...

I really feel that the time is ripe for new tunings in contemporary
classical and cutting edge popular musics. New tunings will not only
usher in a plethora of hitherto unheard of shadings of the immensely
well-thumbed preexisting vocabulary, but they will also effect the
very fundamental "raumkunst" (i.e., art of space) fabric of that
vocabulary...

Anyway, these are some of my off-the-cuff opinions and thoughts, I'm
interested to hear what other folks think...
adumbrate away!

--d.stearns

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "D.Stearns" <STEARNS@C...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/14510

As most list members already know, I'm always very much too ready to
adumbrate...

> While I'm pretty sure this won't be a very popular sentiment, it
seems to that for the last 15 years or so there's been more genuine
sonic adventure and DIY rule breaking/bending going on in the average
(not to mention the exceptional) hip-hop tune than there has been in
any of the most up to the minute cutting edge of either contemporary
jazz or classical...

Actually, I would tend to partially agree with you, although I know
the subject really raises the hackles and the heckles in certain
sedate quarters...

Of my young friends is diligently trying to re-write Western
Civilization to the drum of a hip-hop beat.

He calls it "Sound Liberation," and although it is rarely
"alternately tuned" (at least intentionally) and thereby a bit OT,
some list members might want to "check it out..."

http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/69/sound_liberation.html

_____________ ____ __ _
Joseph Pehrson

Dan!

"D.Stearns" wrote:

> As the 20th century gradually recedes into the distance and music
> inches its way out onto the 21st century stage, I'm curious what some
> folks might see as future developments or courses that music might --
> or even should -- take in the coming years.

I really can't see much point of taking the stance of what "should" happen and what "will"
happen I believe would be best described by the likes of a Philip K. Dick.

> While I'm pretty sure this won't be a very popular sentiment, it seems
> to that for the last 15 years or so there's been more genuine sonic
> adventure and DIY rule breaking/bending going on in the average (not
> to mention the exceptional) hip-hop tune than there has been in any of
> the most up to the minute cutting edge of either contemporary jazz or
> classical... Why? Well for one, there's an endless amount of elbowroom
> for exciting new sounds encoded into the very DNA of the music. And
> vital, viable new sounds force the new upon the old...

The problem with this music is its lack of rhythmic or tempo imagination -4/4 ad nauseum. On
this level there is absolutely no elbow room. Its innovation is strictly in the realm of
timbre, although this is not to be underestimated. Music can progress in other directions
through the "technologies" already developed by other musics around the world. India and
Persia have developed meters we haven't even started to explore. The counterpoint of the
pygmies, or the are'are of the solomon islands remain little understood and despite the
popularity of the Bulgarian Woman choir this harmonic direction lies outside our use. European
music needs to take a hard look at what it doesn't do that others have develop successfully.
It will find itself neither advanced in pitch or rhythm, nor timbre. i will argue on one level
i find nothing better about european harmony than the others except in one important feature,
Modulation. Here is where european music has made the most advance and is the very thing that
is being discarded first.

>
> I really feel, in my own dreams and whatnot, a huge need for new
> instruments. To take a spin through any one of the EMI compilation CDs
> is to cast an ear into a world of possibilities so fraught with
> stunning potential that it's positively downright scary!

One has to mention all the instruments that already exist in the world which are in many cases
much more flexible to use with different scales
I believe more can be gained by going deeper into these "technologies" we already have as
opposed to jumping on the bandwagon of the "new". We need to become wider not newer in our
horizons.

> Like it or
> not, musical structures kowtow to interface... music grows up around
> the instruments that avail itself to it. The instruments we got are by
> and large lovely, but mass production has imparted a sort of
> monopolistic hue over the whole affair; and nowhere is this more
> omnipresent than it is with fixed-pitch instruments...

The creation of a scale for fixed pitch instruments is a very different process than tuning
something up in electronics and to my experience, the latter gives a warped view of scales. If
you have to come up with a scale you are going to have to use the rest of your life or even
for 10 years, you are going to look at what the scale can do much more than if you can delete
it tomorrow morning. All scales are not equal. If I was stuck with 13 equal , I think i would
run out of possibilities, well not possibilities but a range of expression.

> I really feel that the time is ripe for new tunings in contemporary
> classical and cutting edge popular musics. New tunings will not only
> usher in a plethora of hitherto unheard of shadings of the immensely
> well-thumbed preexisting vocabulary

I am not one for old wine in new bottles, but those innovations into the new structural
possibilities will be heard as just that at first. the 12 tone mandala is quite deep in the
european ear. the new will be heard in the context of the old.

> , but they will also effect the
> very fundamental "raumkunst" (i.e., art of space) fabric of that
> vocabulary...
>
> Anyway, these are some of my off-the-cuff opinions and thoughts, I'm
> interested to hear what other folks think...
> adumbrate away!

I greatly appreciate you bringing this up Dan. I think these perspectives should be a major
part of our work. It is important to look forward and not always back.

>
>
> --d.stearns
>
>

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
www.anaphoria.com

Kraig Grady wrote,

>The problem with this music is its lack of rhythmic or tempo imagination
-4/4 ad nauseum. On
>this level there is absolutely no elbow room.

This is ridiculous. Good rappers draw from the polyrhythmic drum
improvisations of Africa, with shifting accents and a flexible sense of
swing which is completely elusive to most honkies.

Play some funky music, white boy, and get an appreciation for that which you
dismiss!

>Its innovation is strictly in the realm of
>timbre, although this is not to be underestimated.

Excuse me, but I believe Dan Stearns was specifically saying that this music
has been innovative in the field of _microtonality_, and I agree.

>i will argue on one level
>i find nothing better about european harmony than the others except in one
important feature,
>Modulation.

I disagree. To me, the development, one might even say the discovery, of
tonality in the 17th century is the most important feature, and something
that most of the world has come to terms with in one way or the other.
Modulation is only a means of maintaining interest in extended compositions,
in my view.

- Just another white boy

>From: Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@anaphoria.com>
>
>> While I'm pretty sure this won't be a very popular sentiment, it seems
>> to that for the last 15 years or so there's been more genuine sonic
>> adventure and DIY rule breaking/bending going on in the average (not
>> to mention the exceptional) hip-hop tune than there has been in any of
>> the most up to the minute cutting edge of either contemporary jazz or
>> classical... Why? Well for one, there's an endless amount of elbowroom
>> for exciting new sounds encoded into the very DNA of the music. And
>> vital, viable new sounds force the new upon the old...

Well, this is a subject very dear to my heart. I have to
agree that there is more that is musically vital and new happening on,
of all places, the dance floor, than is happening in the average
University Composition Department. This is not to say that I don't
think a lot of music on the radio and discos might not be greatly
helped by a serious dose of the Academe, even if it involves a little
instruction in something like serialism, an esthetic I find offensive
and ugly. (I'm reminded here of Kyle Gann's statement about this
strange belief in some circles that music must, like medicine, taste
bad to be good for you).

>The problem with this music is its lack of rhythmic or tempo
>imagination -4/4 ad nauseum. On this level there is absolutely no
>elbow room.

Here I must disagree a bit. Of course, there is a lot of
tedious "four on the floor" music on the radio. However, a lot of
interesting experimentation is going on off the beaten track.
Autechre is so rhythmically irregular that *I* can't imagine dancing
to it. Stranger branches of Drum & Base have explored interesting
realms of rhythmic variation that make me fall over. There's a great
song from the album "Stalker" by Covenant which could be construed as
4/4 -- it fits on a drum machine -- but is actually a compound rhythm:
3+3+2/8. It slowly shifts into a standard 4/4. And some people will
write various melody lines which contradict the 4/4 feeling, though
that's less common in straight dance music than I might wish.

> Its innovation is strictly in the realm of timbre,
>although this is not to be underestimated.

Thank you for pointing this out! This is one of the most
interesting areas in electronic music to me, though one hopes people
will get beyond the standard bandpass filter resonance sweep that is
so pervasive Kim Cascone calls it "western culture's Tamboura
instrument."

> i will argue on one level i find nothing better
>about european harmony than the others except in one important
>feature, Modulation. Here is where european music has made the most
>advance and is the very thing that is being discarded first.

Harmonic modulation, with only two possibilities for modal
modulation major->minor or vice versa. One thing I'm very interested
in right now is modal modulation to more distant *melodic* realms. In
fact, in a fit of whimsy and inspired by a harpsichord sample set, I'm
trying to write a few two-voice "inventions" (a la Bach) which go
from, say, JI major to some 11-limit thing and back. Getting my ideas
for modal modulation (a feature, according to Chalmers in "Divisions
of the Tetrachord", of music in Classical Greece, and certainly a
feature of classical Arabic and Turkish musics) to mesh with harmonic
modulation has been, well, interesting. :)

My hope, though, is to take what I've learned from the
inventions and apply them to my Electronica, which *I* certainly hope
to hear on a dance floor some day. I already have planted the seeds
of JI in a friend's mind... if he ever wants to remix my new music,
he'll have to learn to cope with alternate tunings. :) If 808 state
can use standard European modulation in Techno (well, they did about
10 years ago), perhaps I can sneak in a little intonational
variation... That's my goal, at any rate.

--
wm

Just a quick followup to my last post, where I say nasty
things about university composition departments...

I *do* realize that some composition departments harbor
microtonalists, and I'm don't want to be taken for an
anti-intellectual of any sort. But I've attended a lot of faculty and
composition student concerts, and I have to wonder what's going on,
and why so many of said composers spend their time deriding the
ignorance of the listening public...

There has to be some ground between pandering to the least
common denominator of public tastes and finding a new musical voice so
personal or so complex that no one else will ever comprehend it.

--
wm,
doning asbestos suit just in case... :)

"D.Stearns" wrote:

> As the 20th century gradually recedes into the distance and music
> inches its way out onto the 21st century stage, I'm curious what some
> folks might see as future developments or courses that music might --
> or even should -- take in the coming years.

Thank goodness someone has posted on a topic on which I feel I can contribute. I see the
future as particularly exciting for composers, performers and theorists who want to move away
from the stagnation of the 12 - tet old world with its institutions and its conventions and
assumptions about virtuosity, pedagogy and direction. Composers of new music will have to
learn humility and relearn theory, as many on this list have done admirably, or forever
recycle decaying material. Some do this recycling very well, such as Arvo Part. His genius
however lies in finding pure resonances beyond the 12 -tet system which becomes little more
than a notational tool in his hands.

> I really feel, in my own dreams and whatnot, a huge need for new
> instruments. I really feel that the time is ripe for new tunings in contemporary
> classical and cutting edge popular musics.

The new composer will be theorist, instrument maker (or adapter) and composer. This new
composer would be wise to be internally motivated and patient .

>
> Anyway, these are some of my off-the-cuff opinions and thoughts, I'm
> interested to hear what other folks think...
> adumbrate away!

That's what I think. Peace to All.

O
/ | \
<__ >

>
>

"Paul H. Erlich" wrote:

> Kraig Grady wrote,
>
> >The problem with this music is its lack of rhythmic or tempo imagination
> -4/4 ad nauseum. On
> >this level there is absolutely no elbow room.
>
> This is ridiculous. Good rappers draw from the polyrhythmic drum
> improvisations of Africa, with shifting accents and a flexible sense of
> swing which is completely elusive to most honkies.

I doubt if 90 % of them have even heard much african music coming from the backgrounds. The
underlying meter is always 4/4 , not the most common african rhythm. the tempos are not much
better, 120 is it not. The vocals have got to be the least interesting feature of what
musically going on. I never hear african music with this degree of limited pitch use.
Outside of one CD from Kenya (maybe), I have never heard in african music anything that i can
say, oh yes here is where rap is from. It is no more african or rhythmically inventive that
Dylan' Subterranean homesick blues. Irish protest songs use the similar speech patterns also.
You have to speak fast before they come and drag you away, it pretty universal. It is hard to
see it anything more than the product of the overheated urban musical existence of corporate
profits. Some great use of electronics for new timbres is where this music offers
something.

> Play some funky music, white boy, and get an appreciation for that which you
> dismiss!

I don't dismiss it, but to claim this is the cutting edge of the world is rather misinformed.
Anyway Coltrane is a much better example of some good black music as opposed to funk, the most
corporate and the 12ETed black music i can think of. BTW I am part Ojibwe indian and we
always had tonality (see below).

>
> >Its innovation is strictly in the realm of
> >timbre, although this is not to be underestimated.
>
> Excuse me, but I believe Dan Stearns was specifically saying that this music
> has been innovative in the field of _microtonality_, and I agree.

how is it innovative when the originals are more highly developed along these lines. What you
only like this stuff or it is only valid when it has been partly anglo-ized!

>
>
> >i will argue on one level
> >i find nothing better about european harmony than the others except in one
> important feature,
> >Modulation.
>
> I disagree. To me, the development, one might even say the discovery, of
> tonality in the 17th century is the most important feature, and something
> that most of the world has come to terms with in one way or the other.
> Modulation is only a means of maintaining interest in extended compositions,
> in my view.

Tonality is already all around the world before 17th century europe. India, Persia, China,
Africa, Indonesia, native American etc.
Modulation is the one of the basic forms of expression as to setting up different levels of
emotional content. The Beatles ( a simple example) used this to their advantage, key
change=emotional change.
MAHLER TOO

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
www.anaphoria.com

"William S. Annis" wrote:

> >From: Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@anaphoria.com>
> >
> >> While I'm pretty sure this won't be a very popular sentiment, it seems
> >> to that for the last 15 years or so there's been more genuine sonic
> >> adventure and DIY rule breaking/bending going on in the average (not
> >> to mention the exceptional) hip-hop tune than there has been in any of
> >> the most up to the minute cutting edge of either contemporary jazz or
> >> classical... Why? Well for one, there's an endless amount of elbowroom
> >> for exciting new sounds encoded into the very DNA of the music. And
> >> vital, viable new sounds force the new upon the old...
>
> Well, this is a subject very dear to my heart. I have to
> agree that there is more that is musically vital and new happening on,
> of all places, the dance floor, than is happening in the average
> University Composition Department. This is not to say that I don't
> think a lot of music on the radio and discos might not be greatly
> helped by a serious dose of the Academe, even if it involves a little
> instruction in something like serialism, an esthetic I find offensive
> and ugly. (I'm reminded here of Kyle Gann's statement about this
> strange belief in some circles that music must, like medicine, taste
> bad to be good for you).

this was Dan statement not mine!

> >The problem with this music is its lack of rhythmic or tempo
> >imagination -4/4 ad nauseum. On this level there is absolutely no
> >elbow room.
>
> Here I must disagree a bit. Of course, there is a lot of
> tedious "four on the floor" music on the radio. However, a lot of
> interesting experimentation is going on off the beaten track.
> Autechre is so rhythmically irregular that *I* can't imagine dancing
> to it.

I was going to mention Autechre (who I think have to be the forefront of what is possible) but
i don't think of them a hip-hop. Outside of Autechre i have been disappointed in what others
have been doing. If you have other recommendations, please share them. Still i think there is
so much Autechre doesn't do and has been done for hundreds of years that is just as important.

> Stranger branches of Drum & Base have explored interesting
> realms of rhythmic variation that make me fall over. There's a great
> song from the album "Stalker" by Covenant which could be construed as
> 4/4 -- it fits on a drum machine -- but is actually a compound rhythm:
> 3+3+2/8.

well all rock uses this

> It slowly shifts into a standard 4/4. And some people will
> write various melody lines which contradict the 4/4 feeling, though
> that's less common in straight dance music than I might wish.
>
> > Its innovation is strictly in the realm of timbre,
> >although this is not to be underestimated.
>
> Thank you for pointing this out! This is one of the most
> interesting areas in electronic music to me, though one hopes people
> will get beyond the standard bandpass filter resonance sweep that is
> so pervasive Kim Cascone calls it "western culture's Tamboura
> instrument."
>
> > i will argue on one level i find nothing better
> >about european harmony than the others except in one important
> >feature, Modulation. Here is where european music has made the most
> >advance and is the very thing that is being discarded first.
>
> Harmonic modulation, with only two possibilities for modal
> modulation major->minor or vice versa. One thing I'm very interested
> in right now is modal modulation to more distant *melodic* realms. In
> fact, in a fit of whimsy and inspired by a harpsichord sample set, I'm
> trying to write a few two-voice "inventions" (a la Bach) which go
> from, say, JI major to some 11-limit thing and back. Getting my ideas
> for modal modulation (a feature, according to Chalmers in "Divisions
> of the Tetrachord", of music in Classical Greece, and certainly a
> feature of classical Arabic and Turkish musics) to mesh with harmonic
> modulation has been, well, interesting. :)

It is in this direction we can best use the european tradition!

>
>
> My hope, though, is to take what I've learned from the
> inventions and apply them to my Electronica, which *I* certainly hope
> to hear on a dance floor some day. I already have planted the seeds
> of JI in a friend's mind... if he ever wants to remix my new music,
> he'll have to learn to cope with alternate tunings. :) If 808 state
> can use standard European modulation in Techno (well, they did about
> 10 years ago), perhaps I can sneak in a little intonational
> variation... That's my goal, at any rate.

I thought that some of the Aphex twin Ambient 2 CD's uses some interesting pitch use which i
can't really tell what it is but nice.

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
www.anaphoria.com

William!
There is a difference between compromise and finding those aspects of one own voice that
communicates to others. Still if you do anything but your own voice, you will do it worse.
Artist are people who create things that are sometimes useful for others. I think it is
dangerous to assume that because you do something different that isn't like others that it
won't communicate to all. I have known more people and artist that have disappeared into the
framework who thought they could compromise and change things from within. The record
companies are in big hot water, there sales are way down, their public is getting younger and
younger possibly down to 8 being you average MTV watcher. Is music in this culture going to be
determined by what 8 years olds want or what corporations think 8 year olds want. Maybe the
problem is the very lack of personal expression.

BTW now that I think about it I am much more likely to dance/move to Autechre than the
monotonous beat of music that is supposed to make me dance. I feel the same way about
stravinsky. and the great master of the corporeal Partch. Who really wants to listen to
delusion sitting down!!!!

"William S. Annis" wrote:

>
> There has to be some ground between pandering to the least
> common denominator of public tastes and finding a new musical voice so
> personal or so complex that no one else will ever comprehend it.
>
> --
> wm,
> doning asbestos suit just in case... :)

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
www.anaphoria.com

>I doubt if 90 % of them have even heard much african music coming from the
backgrounds.

Well, it's cultural -- hip-hop comes from funk, which comes from gospel,
which comes from . . . and eventually you get back to Africa.

>The
>underlying meter is always 4/4 , not the most common african rhythm.

Much african music is 4/4 and 6/8 superimposed. Sometimes the shifting
accents will suggest odd meters superimposed on that, but in all the African
music I've heard, there's at least an implied 4/4 and/or 6/8 holding it all
together.

>the tempos are not much
>better, 120 is it not.

???

>The vocals have got to be the least interesting feature of what
>musically going on. I never hear african music with this degree of limited
pitch use.

The vocals operate on a rhythmic, and, of course, textural level -- and the
use of pitch inflections in speech is a whole area of microtonality that
both you and I have totally ignored in our theories.

>It is no more african or rhythmically inventive that
>Dylan' Subterranean homesick blues. Irish protest songs use the similar
speech patterns also.
>You have to speak fast before they come and drag you away, it pretty
universal. It is hard to
>see it anything more than the product of the overheated urban musical
existence of corporate
>profits.

What is "overheated urban musical existence of corporate profits"? I have
friends who are rappers and they are creative artists just as you and I.
Anyway, much rap is corporate crap, but I'm talking about the good stuff.

>I don't dismiss it, but to claim this is the cutting edge of the world is
rather misinformed.
>Anyway Coltrane is a much better example of some good black music as
opposed to funk,

What's the point of this remark? Do you need to feel politically correct by
having your own pet example of some "good black music"?

>the most
>corporate and the 12ETed black music i can think of.

It's the _least_ 12ETed.

>BTW I am part Ojibwe indian and we
>always had tonality (see below).

>> Excuse me, but I believe Dan Stearns was specifically saying that this
music
>> has been innovative in the field of _microtonality_, and I agree.

>how is it innovative when the originals are more highly developed along
these lines.

If you're saying old-school rap was more highly developed along these lines,
I might agree, but we're saying it _has been_ microtonally innovative, not
denying that some acts may be derivative and regressive.

>What you
>only like this stuff or it is only valid when it has been partly
anglo-ized!

What does that sentence mean?

>Tonality is already all around the world before 17th century europe. India,
Persia, China,
>Africa, Indonesia, native American etc.

We've had this argument about the definition of tonality before. I mean
common-practice tonality, with changing triadic harmonies, directed
dissonance, and restriction in the number of modes in order to allow these
elements to become functional features that correlate with melodic cues.
There are artists in almost all countries, for better or worse, who have
adopted this "trick" and adapted their songs to it.

>Modulation is the one of the basic forms of expression as to setting up
different levels of
>emotional content. The Beatles ( a simple example) used this to their
advantage, key
>change=emotional change.

Yes, I totally agree. "You're Gonna Lose That Girl" is a wonderful early
example, and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" a brilliant later one. But you
need to know how to establish tonal centers before you can change them!

I wrote,

>The vocals operate on a rhythmic, and, of course, textural level

I meant "textual" but maybe it was a Freudian slip.

Joseph Pehrson wrote,

> Actually, I would tend to partially agree with you, although I know
the subject really raises the hackles and the heckles in certain
sedate quarters...

Back in the early '90s I recorded a (still unreleased) experimental
microtonal rap album "Oppression on Expression" with Mat Maneri
(actually the whole Maneri family eventually got involved)... I should
post some of the reviews. People just say the darndest things
sometimes! Apparently there's nothing quite like experimental
microtonal rap to stir the, ah, ahem... passions of reviewers!

Anyway, if you can imagine an all microtonal rappin' cross somewhere
between Bootsy's "Ultra Wave" (a way undervalued experimental
funk/disco masterpiece) and Richard Burton in say "Night of the
Iguana" or "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold", well then you'll kinda
get the idea.

--d.stearns

Kraig Grady wrote,

> The problem with this music is its lack of rhythmic or tempo
imagination -4/4 ad nauseum.

Hmm, I dunno Kraig... meters are one thing and rhythms quite another!
I've heard some mighty tricky and downright wacky rhythmic business.

> Its innovation is strictly in the realm of timbre, although this is
not to be underestimated.

Song structure as well I think... what constitutes a "melody", a
"part" etc., etc... Rap also sets up an environment that's naturally
conducive to outdoing what's already been done too, so it's got quite
a bit of elbowroom within its "idiomatic" boundaries.

> Music can progress in other directions through the "technologies"
already developed by other musics around the world.

Yes, I totally agree!

> i will argue on one level i find nothing better about european
harmony than the others except in one important feature, Modulation.
Here is where european music has made the most advance and is the very
thing that is being discarded first.

I disagree. I personally wouldn't want to do without "dissonance" in
say the post Ives sense (yes I know Ives wasn't European!, but he/it
is all better understood in that context here). I can do without it in
others music (though sometimes I miss it there as well), but for my
own I'd more than miss it if it were gone!

> We need to become wider not newer in our horizons.

I vote for both!

> I greatly appreciate you bringing this up Dan.

I greatly appreciate you sharing views Kraig, there's a lot there to
chew on.

> I think these perspectives should be a major part of our work. It is
important to look forward and not always back.

Again, if given the option I'm voting for both!

--d.stearns

Paul H. Erlich wrote,

> I believe Dan Stearns was specifically saying that this music has
been innovative in the field of _microtonality_, and I agree.

Well that wasn't "specifically" what I was saying, but it certainly
was part of it. For anyone who might be interested, both the
intonation and phrasing of the 4th fretless guitar solo on "One Step
from the Street" were directly influenced and abstracted from Jamaican
"Dancehall".

<http://stations.mp3s.com/stations/55/117_west_great_western.html>

--d.stearns

>From: Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@anaphoria.com>
>
>William!
>
> There is a difference between compromise and finding those
>aspects of one own voice that communicates to others. Still if you
>do anything but your own voice, you will do it worse.

Well, I wasn't suggesting trying on on other people's voices
necessarily...

<big drigression here>

This came to me while preparing dinner...

I think the Tuning list should just have a big, intonational
kegger, with an artesian keg for those who abstain. While I am a big
fan of technology, I really think email is an appalling tool for
discussing music.

Or a conference! We could have a Tuning List Conference.
Perhaps we could get Lou Harrison (sp? one 's' or two) or Banaphshu
for a keynote address. I could give a tutorial on detwelvulating
Reaktor, Paul E. could get us all up to date on Relative Harmonic
Entropy and perhaps I could hunt down Wm Sethares to get him to work
through one of those symbolic spectrum derivations. And I could get
Chalmers' autograph in my copy of "Divisions of the Tetrachord!"

Established composers could perform their works, and perhaps
give some guidance to us beginners in workshops. And Margo could
sing a motet or two in that new tuning of hers!

And, most of all, we could each politely rant about our
various interests and viewpoints without courting RSI and having to
deal with the sometimes erratic and chilly nature of electronic
communication. Plus, people are generally more polite face to face
and it's easier to see if someone is about to get pushed over the
edge.

I bet *someone* would give a grant for this.

<end big digression>

As I was saying...

I'm not doing a very good job of getting my ideas out of my
head and into language.

So, a new poet may start by writing poems in the style of some
other poet, or at least in some established form. This gives a nice
introduction to the challenges of the techniques of poetry. This is
the argument for making composition and theory students study
Palestrina's counterpoint style: it gives an excellent introduction to
various musical problems, to *craft*. But you can't stay there, aping
a master or historical styles. You have to move on, to say new
things, or perhaps say old things in new ways (e.g., Wendy Carlos and
Bach). But any poet who wants to be understood by more than a handful
of people should probably not create an entirely new *language* for
their poetry (well, unless you're J.R.R. Tolkien and want to write a
few novels to situate your languages and your Weltschmertz-sodden
poems). Of course, if that's the only route you can go, you should go
there, but it seems churlish at this point to gripe about the
Philistines unwilling to master Elvish.

The average audience... even an above-average audience who
*want* to understand your music, is probably not preparted to cope
with something entirely new and free of any associations or history.
There are so many dimensions on which to be new and true to your own
voice, that it seems like over-kill to me to innovate on all of them
at once. It's so much work for the listener! Give me *something*
familiar to ground myself in. Even if you're planning to subvert that
very familiarity, if I have an sense of humor or satire, I'll still be
able to see what's being done to my familiar, cozy convention. Now, I
have no problem at all with composers writing music for composers. I
just think we need to recognize when that's what we've written. I
like piobreachd, too, but when my friends who don't like it, and sure
don't understand it, I don't call them names or malign their taste.
Now, if a bagpiper friend didn't care for it, that'd be another
story...

So, I guess, Kraig, I'm all for being true to one's own and
uncompromised voice so long as there is some honest assessment of how
likely it is to be understood and without maligning people who aren't
necessarily able (or willing) to hear that voice. I think this last
point is what so irritates me about a certain class of composers. Art
is not entitled to an audience. If there is an audience for my music,
wonderful. If not, well, I'll cope. I sure have no business
demanding that I be listened to.

I think I've officially veered entirely off topic.

--
wm

William S. Annis wrote,

> The average audience... even an above-average audience who *want* to
understand your music, is probably not preparted to cope with
something entirely new and free of any associations or history.

Is that, "something entirely new and free of any associations or
history", even possible!

> There are so many dimensions on which to be new and true to your own
voice, that it seems like over-kill to me to innovate on all of them
at once. It's so much work for the listener! Give me *something*
familiar to ground myself in. Even if you're planning to subvert that
very familiarity, if I have an sense of humor or satire, I'll still be
able to see what's being done to my familiar, cozy convention.

Not that it really matters, but as an example of how thing so often
seem to go I thought that I chime in here and say that my own
"natural" instincts are probably about the exact opposite of
everything you say hear! That doesn't mean that I think your "wrong",
quite the opposite in fact, but that general tenor would be quite at
odds with my own... What comes natural and therefore seems logical and
straightforward enough for one might just be quite another thing for
someone else.

> I think I've officially veered entirely off topic.

I don't think so. Nice post!

--d.stearns

"William S. Annis" wrote:

> >From: Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@anaphoria.com>
> >
> >William!
> >
> > There is a difference between compromise and finding those
> >aspects of one own voice that communicates to others. Still if you
> >do anything but your own voice, you will do it worse.
>
> Well, I wasn't suggesting trying on on other people's voices
> necessarily...

I assumed you were not either

>
> I think the Tuning list should just have ........ a conference!

> Such things become part of next year microfest to a much less limited degree grants have to
> be hunted down and applied for..lot of work if you wish.!
>
>
> As I was saying...
>
> I'm not doing a very good job of getting my ideas out of my
> head and into language.

that ok neither do I many times

>
> So, a new poet may start by writing poems in the style of some
> other poet, or at least in some established form. This gives a nice
> introduction to the challenges of the techniques of poetry. This is
> the argument for making composition and theory students study
> Palestrina's counterpoint style: it gives an excellent introduction to
> various musical problems, to *craft*. But you can't stay there, aping
> a master or historical styles. You have to move on, to say new
> things, or perhaps say old things in new ways (e.g., Wendy Carlos and
> Bach). But any poet who wants to be understood by more than a handful
> of people should probably not create an entirely new *language* for
> their poetry (well, unless you're J.R.R. Tolkien and want to write a
> few novels to situate your languages and your Weltschmertz-sodden
> poems). Of course, if that's the only route you can go, you should go
> there, but it seems churlish at this point to gripe about the
> Philistines unwilling to master Elvish.

I don't know what could be done that hasn't already been touched upon.

> The average audience... even an above-average audience who
> *want* to understand your music, is probably not preparted to cope
> with something entirely new and free of any associations or history.

I think many listeners are bored stiff with hearing the familiar.

> There are so many dimensions on which to be new and true to your own
> voice, that it seems like over-kill to me to innovate on all of them
> at once. It's so much work for the listener! Give me *something*
> familiar to ground myself in. Even if you're planning to subvert that
> very familiarity, if I have an sense of humor or satire, I'll still be
> able to see what's being done to my familiar, cozy convention. Now, I
> have no problem at all with composers writing music for composers. I
> just think we need to recognize when that's what we've written. I
> like piobreachd, too, but when my friends who don't like it, and sure
> don't understand it, I don't call them names or malign their taste.
> Now, if a bagpiper friend didn't care for it, that'd be another
> story...

I guess the whole problem with all this is that I think it is the wrong question. what good is
music that everyone understands and in a year is pass�. Lets look at all those blue note
recordings, sometimes made in clubs with 10 people in them. Joe blow didn't understand a note
and now every Joe blow does. you cannot predict nor can you guess what people will understand
tomorrow. If you understand it is what matters. Now if you throw something together as a
process and think it is supposed to mean something
this is something else. I believe this is what you mean by music for other composers. I think
most of us are people writing for other people, as far as history is concerned the outlook is
highly uncertain (to paraphrase Britten:-) )

>
>
> So, I guess, Kraig, I'm all for being true to one's own and
> uncompromised voice so long as there is some honest assessment of how
> likely it is to be understood and without maligning people who aren't
> necessarily able (or willing) to hear that voice.

How do you evaluate such a thing. Corporate market statistical research attempts to do this
and it is not paying off. All music that has lasted started with a small audience and made
other people uncomfortable to start. If one person walks up to you and points out what you set
out to do without prompting, you are communicating. Others will follow.

> I think this last
> point is what so irritates me about a certain class of composers. Art
> is not entitled to an audience. If there is an audience for my music,
> wonderful. If not, well, I'll cope. I sure have no business
> demanding that I be listened to.

>
>
> I think I've officially veered entirely off topic.
>
> --
> wm

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
www.anaphoria.com

Hi, Dan,

I caught a couple shows at the Autumn Uprising festival in Boston this
weekend - EED and Undr Quartet don't stray too far from normal
instruments, but the way they use them! These folks use microtones
explicitly all the time, and Undr Quartet especially, they improvise
intricately contrapuntal music largely using extended techniques. Some
of these might not become general practice (like Greg Kelley scraping
the side of his trumpet with sheet metal, or Dave Gross strumming the
keys on his saxophone with a reed guard!) but they're more immediate
than, say, learning to play a four-valve trumpet.
<http://www.teleport.com/~mmpco/tptcat/tptcat13.htm>

Richard Waters and Reed Ghazala's instruments have reached listeners
outside EMI's readership, but in some sense like many of the inventions
from those
(sadly bygone) pages they're far more limited and idiomatic than
traditional Western instruments. The latter survived through evolution
(tuning, timbre, technique, etc...) at least until the 20th century, and
though with some wonderful historical dead ends along
the way, it's difficult to match their accumulated, empirical
flexibility (even with a Waterphone or Trigon Incantor).

It's interesting that the earliest computer music was extended compared
to what has evolved; I forget where, but I read a comment that computer
musicians still are inventing rather than developing virtuosic
technique. Hip hop uses of many of the same musical interfaces mentioned
on this list, and yet perhaps a fluency with these means grows from a
simpler approach rather than modifying parameters, coding macros or even
building from scratch. I think Kraig's comment about the fixedness of
real, fixed-pitch instruments hints to this, as do many of Neil
Haverstick's posts about musically understanding instruments. For my
part, the technical make-up of instruments all but has prevented me from
doing anything musical with them!

Anyways, thanks - this is a thought provoking thread, and I'm looking
forward to that kegger! ;)

Clark