quoted 5 lines Truth be told, if I wanted something that "develops dramatically in an> Truth be told, if I wanted something that "develops dramatically in an
> interesting way" I would listen to Wagner or Beethoven. I'm pretty
> fond of repetition as a compositional strategy, and I think that the
> refusal of narrative structure is one of the strongest aspects of
> electronic dance music in general.
Ah. I take the Oblique Strategies view that repetition is a form of change, and the absence of narrative structure is a form of narrative structure. I'm objecting to taking an idea that you can develop interestingly (whether by repetition or variation) for two minutes and trying to get a six minute tune out of it by sticking in a ring mod or arbitrarily changing the algorithm that generates the beats or spending six days programming a new and phenomenally complicated set of edits to your df filter parameters from time to time.
The distinction between arbitrarily changing something and changing it for a good musical reason is largely down to whether or not I happen to like the tune, though.
quoted 4 lines Also, I have trouble imagining the separation between music and> Also, I have trouble imagining the separation between music and
> technique that you make below. Technique/Expressivity or
> Complexity/Simplicity might work better for your purposes, although I'm
> still not entirely sold...
I've a horrible feeling we're drifting towards a What Is The Purpose of Music and What Effect Should Good Music Have On You argument here, which I'm not even remotely able to deal with. But whatever effect it should have and whatever it should do, I'd still say that there exists music that doesn't do that, and that disguises this by doing something moderately interesting but irrelevant. And that messing around with DSP for no good reason, like playing lots of notes very fast, is quite a good way of doing something moderately interesting but irrelevant. I know that you can't change the sound texture or the rate at which you're playing without changing what's happening 'musically,' but sometimes that change seems like 'the point' and sometimes it seems like a diversionary tactic. Again, the technical distinction is 'if I like it' against 'if I don't like it.' :-)
David
On Jan 25, 2005, at 5:09 AM, David Sim wrote:
quoted 30 lines I think part of this "I hate DSP wankery" depends on what sort of ear>>I think part of this "I hate DSP wankery" depends on what sort of ear
>>you have for noise. If noise is noise is noise to you, then a lot of
>>heavily processed Max/DSP-produced stuff will probably sound similar
>>and boring. On the other hand, if noise is just unrecognized music to
>>you, then it's a lot more exciting.
>
>I'm not sure. I quite like noise. I don't think all of the people who
>are ambivalent towards DSPery are merely objecting to the lack of big
>obvious melodies. The problem that I personally have with some[1] of
>the heavily processed stuff around at the moment is that it makes an
>impressive number of parameter changes per second its main feature,
>and enables people to try to keep your interest by repeating the same
>idea over and over again with a different 17 plugins every time,
>rather than by writing something that develops dramatically in an
>interesting way.
>
>The comparison to the introduction of drum machines doesn't really
>hold up - if you like electronic music at all, you'd be forced to
>admit that programming dense glitch-hoppery is pretty technically
>intense. Probably a better analogy would be to the Steve Vai-esque
>fretwankers, or to the sillier end of slap bass, where technical skill
>and speed are worshipped at the expense of everything else.[2] Whereas
>if you're Jimi Hendrix or Charlie Parker or (for my money) Autechre
>you can be technical and musical, and everyone wins.
>
>d.
>
>[1] but far from all. Some of it I love.
>[2] I'm probably going to get savaged by outraged Steve Vai fans now...
>
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