[microsound] post-laptop era?

[Robin Parmar]

David Powers wrote:

> The lifespan of technologies is too short

If the lifespan of any technology is long enough to produce a piece of music then it is long enough.

> for any new instrument, there are no teachers and no tradition.

All new instruments must perforce fall into one of the existing classes based on sound production. It will either have a vibrating membrane, string or column of air or produce sound electronically. In each case one can base one's tutelage on similar instruments, with generations of prior knowledge at one's disposal.

> 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".

I am almost never interested in virtuosity and am likewise uninterested in naive amateurism. You are dismissing a world of music that lies in between.

> I believe that much important musical knowledge is being lost

I have no idea how you come to that conclusion. Or why you wish to attribute the cause of such a fate to electronic musicians. Surely someone can make music with, say, pure sine tones, without being blamed for the loss of indigenous music in the Amazon basin? Should students of additive synthesis be considered deficient if they do not have deep knowledge of, say, a Javanese Gamelon? One might just as well chastise Hindustani practitioners for a deep ignorance of death metal.

> 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". 

I can think of no viable definition of "sampling" that would lead to that conclusion, but I would prefer to know your working definition in any case. If sampling is taken to mean the appropriation of segments of a previous work, then it has been alive and well through the traditions of electronica, hip-hop, jazz, most folk musics, etc., all the way back to the beginnings of music itself. If it is taken to mean the digital renderings of analogue audio then it has many decades of rigorous study and application by researchers, academic composers, drum'n'bass artists, purveyors of noise and drone, and so on... all of whom would find it rather insulting to be compared to a "special effect" (which is what you appear to mean, rather than "sound effect".)

> It has no impact on the inner structure of a musical composition.

We are on the microsound list. Please read Curtis Roads' book of the same name to understand the deep impact on musical structure at various time scales that digital sampling has in fact engendered.

> 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.

Explain again how "My Favorite Things" was free of the market? Or free of technology? Or perhaps admit to a less negative and more nuanced view of life under capital.

-- Robin Parmar