[microsound] 'that's edutainment'

[Jason Wehmhoener]

Certainly. There are so many qualitative attributes of sound and musical
structure that we can discuss without attachment to theory or ideology.

However, this isn't to say that theory is without value, or that it cannot
directly inform the direct discussion of physical attributes.

But I do appreciate conversation that is grounded in phenomena I can
directly experience with my senses. That type of discussion is less prone to
ideological distortion. Of course, the input of our senses are interpreted
by our minds, so we are never entirely free of ideas and interpretation.

But I'll give an example that isn't related to music, that I encountered in
my graphic design work the other day. An art director was reviewing some
icons an artist had produced, and he said "the elements feel disconnected".
The artist doesn't have very good English, so I encouraged him to frame his
critique in terms based on dimension, lighting or hue. He reworded what he
was saying to "the globes should be somewhat transparent to allow for the
connecting stems to be visible underneath. The gradient used to create the
lighting effect should have more variance in values to enhance the feeling
of dimension in the globes." etc.

Theory and 'isms, as well as less complex forms of communication, can often
be a form of shared shorthand. This can make communication between a small
number of people more efficient in some settings, but when you start looking
at communicating with a networked world where individual frames of reference
can have wide variance, it is often helpful to simplify and de-jargonize our
language, and focus on descriptive terms that are easy to relate to because
they directly reference the experience of our senses.

Am I making any sense?

-Jason



On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 12:07 PM, CraqueMat <craque at craque.net> wrote:

> Is there a way to talk about music without using ism's?
>
> I'm not being an ass, this is genuine curiosity.
>
> Sometimes I'm bothered by the way I can't be a part of a conversation
> just because I haven't had time to read a book (and I read a lot).
>
> Damian Stewart wrote:
> > Stephen Hastings-King wrote:
> >
> >> 2. these days, everyone's a situationist.
> >
> > could you explain this a little? i only came across the situationists
> quite
> > recently...
> >
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>
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