[microsound] post-laptop era?

Tue Dec 15 18:15:13 EST 2009

Re. computer with a non-computer interface - it seems to me that most
digital gear is exactly that, be it an mpc or one of those 'workstation'
keyboards.

Re. the loss of musical traditions, I think that many
hip-hop/glitch/house/techno artists would disagree - many would argue that
the mpc/303/808/909 etc. is/are at the foundation of the style and sound of
their music.

Sampling as 'merely a sound effect', eh ? Wooh...there's a can of worms
you've opened...

i'd also be careful about positioning the 'old' 'real' aesthetics of a
coltrane against the 'new' - it reminds me of when people were arguing that
'real' music was played on guitars (or whatever) and that anything played on
electronic instruments wasn't 'real' music. As a kid it usually boiled down
to a drunken argument of zeppelin vs. kraftwerk...stupid.

On 12/15/09 3:00 PM, "David Powers" <cyborgk at gmail.com> wrote:

> Personally I believe that there is a problem with this hypothesis.
> 
> To begin with, I have yet to see a human/machine interface that gives
> me the kind of nuance that I achieve when I play piano. Even if such
> an interface existed, when encounters the problem of technological
> obsolescence. The lifespan of technologies is too short, and for any
> new instrument, there are no teachers and no tradition. Thus, it is
> difficult if not impossible to achieve the kind of virtuosity that is
> possible on more traditional instruments. This in turn means the range
> of performance possibilities tends to be rather limited, or if I might
> say so, even rather "amateurish".
> 
> However, I am even more disturbed by a trend I see arising as a result
> of the prevalence of digital music making: I believe that much
> important musical knowledge is being lost. If one considers the great
> musical traditions of the world, which for me would include Indian
> classical, Chinese and Japanese music, West African drumming, European
> classical, jazz, and contemporary compositional practices, there is a
> huge range of harmonic, rhythmic, melodic, and timbral knowledge and
> possibility available. Yet, most of this knowledge is being forgotten,
> leading to extremely narrow musical practices. Instead of mastering
> the structural aspects of these musics, one usually encounters them,
> if at all, as directly sampled appropriations.
> 
> The problem with this is that sampling (like the application of novel
> dsp effects here and there) normally exists entirely at the surface;
> it is in most cases merely a "sound effect". It has no impact on the
> inner structure of a musical composition. Consider the difference
> between the influence of Indian music on, say, John Coltrane's
> saxophone improvisations, with a piece of music that merely samples a
> sitar riff. The difference is obvious: by taking seriously the inner
> structure of Indian music, and using the insights gained in this way,
> Coltrane was able to produce a radical new musical space. Coltrane's
> recording of "My Favorite Things" is precisely an Event, opening up
> the space of freedom, proposing a new way of creating vibrations. One
> might even say that at a certain level, the sitar sample is, in
> Hegelian terms, an abstract negation of Indian music; it is simply an
> empty signifier for an exotic Other; it refers to another tradition,
> the better to avoid any real encounter, to keep this alien Other at a
> distance. Coltrane's approach, on the other hand, is to wrestle with
> the Other, not to reproduce it but to critically encounter it in order
> to produce a synthesis that produces something really new, something
> which is no longer just jazz, but is not Indian music either, nor is
> it just a simple pastiche of the two.
> 
> In conclusion, I would say that one must distinguish between mere
> progress, which in our day and age is only the passing of time under
> the rule of capital, and the radically new which comes as an Event
> rupturing the structure of reality and opening up new possibilities
> for freedom. Technological progress is not bringing more freedom, it
> is not opening up new possibilities, precisely because progress
> remains entirely within the coordinates of the market place and the
> society of controlled consumption.
> 
> If we wish to really discover what is new, in art as in life, perhaps
> it is time to take a deep breath, to step back, and to not be afraid
> of what is considered "old-fashioned" and traditional; not so that we
> can slavishly recreate a tradition, but in order to find the seeds of
> the new, the possibilities for freedom that lie dormant within the
> accumulated cultural experience of the global human society.
> 
> ~David
> 
> On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Graham Miller
> <grahammiller at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>> the future is in control surfaces and human/machine interfaces...
>> 
>> On 15-Dec-09, at 1:27 PM, Adern X wrote:
>> 
>> IMHO in the last two years laptop moved from being a music generator to the
>> state of a music controller. In other words, if some times ago laptop music
>> used mostly sinewaves as input, now it seems more interesting doing realtime
>> manipulation of samples (or somenting coming from audio inputs) or play with
>> other (real?) instruments.
>> The result is that it seems less "laptop-music" perhaps because, for me,
>> music using sinewaves seems in a creative cul-de-sac.
>> Hi!
>> Il giorno 15/dic/09, alle ore 18:38, Kim Cascone ha scritto:
>> 
>> over the past couple of years I've noticed interesting developments in new
>> music
>> one is the seemingly sudden plethora of laptop musicians
>> the other is the death of laptop music
>> 
>> interested in hearing opinions regarding the state of new music culture and
>> .microsound
>> 
>> 
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>> Adern X
>> http://www.xevor.net
>> http://www.myspace.com/adernx
>> "Boredom is the mother of creativity" (Ron Arad)
>> 
>> 
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