Well Drew, if I had to listen to Bach for melodies, ha ha ha, I'd die trying
to find a sufficient Melody for my ear.............
I get your drift and somewhat feel ya, but if U listen to John Beltrans 10
Days of Blue or Placid Angels, The Cry and think this is as melodic as Ae's
Chiastic Slide....................nawh!!!!!!.......
Again, though, U kinda hit the issue on the head when u mentioned it depends
on what one is after and that there are melodies any most if not all sound!
Hk!
quoted 38 lines -----Original Message-----
> -----Original Message-----
> From: mcess@slip.net [SMTP:mcess@slip.net]
> Sent: Monday, August 23, 1999 3:37 PM
> To: idm@hyperreal.org
> Subject: (idm) "ch- ch- check out my melody"- Eric B. and Rakim
>
> "Every noise has a note." That's a helpful motto from the folks at AMM
> (circa '66) that I think is really applicable to this whole wave of posts
> about "melody" vs. "clanky noise". Pure white noise aside, just about
> every sound you can make has some pitch information in it, and when you
> create patterns out of those sounds, you create sequences of pitches-
> there
> may be melodies inside all sorts of purely glitchy, complex programming
> beats if you listen for them. To keep things nice n IDMish, I would single
> out Ae's "Chiastic Slide" as an excellent example of this effect: melodies
> are implicit in almost entirely percussive songs. To venture away from
> IDM,
> consider gamelan in this context: is there such a clear distinction
> between
> what is a rhythmic pattern and what is a melody in a gamelan performance?
> Another example would be a Xenakis piece like "Pleiades", where melody and
> rhythm seem to mesh.
> If the complaint is "Why isn't IDM melodically rich enough?", I would
> suggest that, if melody is really the *primary* thing you are looking for,
> why not try Burt Bacharach, Mahler, Van Dyke Parks, Bach, etc.? Why not
> check out people who are actually talented at writing complex melodic
> music, not just puny drifting three note minor chord whooshes? Seriously,
> if you listen to even a prosaic Broadway standard like "Baubles, Bangles,
> and Beads", you will hear more intricate bridges, shifts in tempo, strange
> chords, and multi-layered melodic information than you will hear in your
> standard IDM track- not to say that therefore they should listen to
> Broadway instead of the latest Schematic 12", but people who think IDM is
> "the most complex music" really ought to check out other sections of the
> record store before they pat themselves on the back again for being so
> "deep". . .
>
> Drew
>