On Music

[myrnova]

regarding "musical innovation"...

Something "innovative" is when 99% of people recognize it as "new". Television was "innovative", polyphony, perspective, counterpoint, 3/4, printing, electric guitar, hip-hop, computers...

"Modern music" is neither "innovative" nor "music". It is just "art of manipulating sounds" and known by 0'001% of the entire population. A niche for ultraexperts "timbre modification" maniacs and/or wannabe "alternative" ones.

99,9% of music is still music worldwide (... guess why?) and what a few wannabe "innovators" call "music" we (the musicians) simply call "sound effects".

[regretfullySaid]

I don't think Onyx Ashanti was a good example since he's still using familiar methods (fm synthesis, chromatic). It's the spectral morphing and lattice-based approach that should be stressed from Tappers response, I think. But, after the creation of spectrally spliced timbres I'd still like to hear them stretched and squashed in realtime granularly, in the same exreme way you can hear Onyx do when he's playing. But his granular method sounds tighter than what you may typically hear from Reaktor/warp mode/m4l granulars, which sound like there's longer fade/loop time with the grains.

Doesn't Clark have an older album that sounds like a mix between more recent Amon Tobin sounds with erratic Aphex style composition?

[rozling]

The thing about modern music is that the traditional conception of a "note" doesn't really apply these days.

False

We have the ability to sculpt things that some call "sound objects" that defy the old conceptions of a "note" and are more akin to the concept of sculpture wherein an "object" (sound) can be modified to the point of being indistinguishable from the original sound that we started with.

True

This makes traditional music theory useless

False

and means that we have to come up with an entirely new way of codifying our methods.

Well not "have to" but...

I can't think of any electronic musicians who would want their work reproduced exactly, apart from selling you one of their CDs.

I don't think it's about that; it's more about being able to communicate a texture or timbre without making "schyoom" noises with your mouth or pointing to 2:32 in a Youtube video.

That is because in Europe music is ... X. In the U.S. on the contrary people call "music" ... Y.

This right here should have been the first clue that this user is trolling and has no intention of actually engaging in the conversation in a meaningful way. The only way to get rid of a troll is to ignore them. I'm surprised at you all for engaging.

Anyway IMO, music = organised sound. Do we *have to* codify this in new ways? No. But we will! DAW makers are always looking for new features (especially aesthetically obvious ones) to sell more product. Professional musicians/composers/sound designers would likely benefit from a more involved shorthand than just dots and lines on a page.

Even sheet music itself is not great as a representation of what the artist wants. Fine if you are happy with interpretation but not if you don't. Even jazz notation with its minimal chord charts can take a while to decode if you haven't heard the tune. How do you write down a 'feel'?

If you creating the musical equivalent of sculpture then maybe any kind of codification scheme - beyond what is necessary to work in a quantized, digitized world - would be against the very spirit of what you are doing.

Interesting point...

[re:dream]

That is because in Europe music is ... X. In the U.S. on the contrary people call "music" ... Y.

This right here should have been the first clue that this user is trolling and has no intention of actually engaging in the conversation in a meaningful way. The only way to get rid of a troll is to ignore them. I'm surprised at you all for engaging.

I know. My bad. Sowwy.

[re:dream]

Even sheet music itself is not great as a representation of what the artist wants. Fine if you are happy with interpretation but not if you don't. Even jazz notation with its minimal chord charts can take a while to decode if you haven't heard the tune. How do you write down a 'feel'?

If you creating the musical equivalent of sculpture then maybe any kind of codification scheme - beyond what is necessary to work in a quantized, digitized world - would be against the very spirit of what you are doing.

Interesting point...

Or maybe a way of coding it that gives the performer some instructions but also leaves a lot open for interpretation and innovation...

[rozling]

I know. My bad. Sowwy.

Or maybe a way of coding it that gives the performer some instructions but also leaves a lot open for interpretation and innovation...

But that's ... jazz charts. Or is thatthejoke.jpg?

[re:dream]

[stringtapper]

The thing about modern music is that the traditional conception of a "note" doesn't really apply these days.

False

This makes traditional music theory useless

False

I clarified what kind of music I was talking about in a later post, which made these comments make more sense.

[myrnova]

This right here should have been the first clue that this user is trolling and has no intention of actually engaging in the conversation in a meaningful way. The only way to get rid of a troll is to ignore them. I'm surprised at you all for engaging.

Please, be careful and try to be more respectful when you talk about other people. You act like "I am the professor, I know this and that" with all your "false", "false", "right", "troll", "this". "that", and eventually you don't even know the first rule in a forum...

[scott nathaniel]

It seems some are using "traditional music theory" and "Western Tonal Harmony" interchangeably. Tonal Harmony breaks "all the fuck up" when attempting to apply it to modern music. Take Wendy Carlos' Alpha scale. That is a usable and interesting scale but it contains no usable notion of the octave. Try notating that using the tools of tonal harmony--and your wee-widdle 25-key midi controller and see if coherency is anywhere in your room!. Applying Myronva's childish rant that music is just "notes in time" is the same as saying words are just letters across a page.

[stringtapper]

I'm pressed for time at the moment but I just want to say that I am encouraged that there are folks here who are genuinely interested in the discussion.

I want to come back to some points others have made, specifically on the issues of representation and how it relates to music without a score; performance practice and how there are aspects of even traditional notated music that can't really be notated when it comes to how performers actually treat music, the music between the notes so to speak; the analogies of architecture, sculpture, and (via Trevor Wishart) I would add chemistry and how we might borrow some conceptions from these disciplines to frame the "noteless" aspect of much modern music.

Be back when I'm out of the mucky-muck.

(And Finn I've got some lists of composers and compositions I'll put together for you)

[myrnova]

It seems some are using "traditional music theory" and "Western Tonal Harmony" interchangeably. Tonal Harmony breaks "all the fuck up" when attempting to apply it to modern music. Take Wendy Carlos' Alpha scale. That is a usable and interesting scale but it contains no usable notion of the octave. Try notating that using the tools of tonal harmony--and your wee-widdle 25-key midi controller and see if coherency is anywhere in your room!. Applying Myronva's childish rant that music is just "notes in time" is the same as saying words are just letters across a page.

"just"

I write "notes in time" and you understand "just notes in time"
For your information, the definition of "notes in time" implies a universe so complex that an entire life is not even enough to understand it. And even nowadays Tonal Harmony is more than enough for 99,9% of music. The fact it cannot be applied to "modern music" is the proof "modern music" is not music, but "manipulation of sounds".

The difference is not between "tonal harmony" and "modern music". The difference is between "music" (a human code which does not need sound to be an instrument of creation) and "sound" (a phisical phenomenon which can only be recorded and manipulated with modern technology, it does not belong to human thought). See "musica humana".

In the U.S. this difference is not so clear, for instance americans call audio tracks in a sequencer "music" (because they "sound" as music). That is the misunderstanding point: music is the SILENT code, and sound is the CONSEQUENCE of music, not the cause. In case of "modern music" you have no "music", indeed, but only sound (since: a) you cannot think it and b) as soon as the sound expires, even "modern music" ceases to exist. On the contrary music exists even without sound, being it human: you can infact think it). This dogma survives in Europe. Americans (here) claim on the contrary that the recorded tracks of that sound are music, too (because of technology). In Europe it remains sound. Music must be "silent", "pre-sound" and objective to be considered music, because it is a code, not a phenomenon.

[re:dream]

The poor kittens. So many of them.

[myrnova]

It’s hard enough for those of us who CAN hear to compose music. Can you imagine composing a symphony, then conducting it completely without your sense of hearing? Only a musical genius could accomplish this astronomical feat, and that’s exactly what Ludwig Van Beethoven did in 1824.

"kittens"

[scott nathaniel]

It seems some are using "traditional music theory" and "Western Tonal Harmony" interchangeably. Tonal Harmony breaks "all the fuck up" when attempting to apply it to modern music. Take Wendy Carlos' Alpha scale. That is a usable and interesting scale but it contains no usable notion of the octave. Try notating that using the tools of tonal harmony--and your wee-widdle 25-key midi controller and see if coherency is anywhere in your room!. Applying Myronva's childish rant that music is just "notes in time" is the same as saying words are just letters across a page.

"just"

I write "notes in time" and you understand "just notes in time"
For your information, the definition of "notes in time" implies a universe so complex that an entire life is not even enough to understand it.

And yet you feel you can sum up that "greater than a lifetime complexity" into a wee-little-diddle of a term you deem "music" and then school us all because we can't grasp that complexity. Personally, whatever you feel is music, however you define music, is of no consequence to music. You've made the infantile mistake of claiming something exists prior to its definition but then claim the term is the thing-in-itself.