[microsound] musical structure

[David Powers]

Yes, I think seeking the One True Theory would be a fool's errand.

My own interest is simply in finding new and productive ways to look
at my musical practice; none of theory I learned in compositional
school seems to really fit with the reality of multiplicity and
diversity of structures that I work with.

Using the concept of plateaus and transitions, for instance, I might
be inspired to compose a piece that gradually moved from Xenakis style
sound masses to Bach-style counterpart. With computers, one would
probably use a statistical transition. To perform an improvised
version, I might only compose the plateaus and let improvisers create
the transitions spontaneously. This is a trivial example, but my point
is the thought to try this didn't occur to me before I thought of a
concept that seems to apply to two extremely different sounding
musics, and which allowed me to imagine some relationship between
them.

I simply want a PRODUCTIVE theory that allows me to improvise and
compose in a disciplined yet spontaneous way. I'm sure there are
plenty of useful ways of thinking of such things out there, but I'm
just not familiar with them. As I've started to create my own personal
theory of music, the main result is that I'm now inspired to create
musical structures I hadn't thought of before.

~David

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 7:54 PM, Paulo Mouat <paulo.mouat at gmail.com> wrote:
> Plateau is probably a "region of stability". But as with most things, we
> would then have to define what "region" and "stability" mean. In my opinion,
> such taxonomies end up being more or less arbitrary and ultimately fail to
> provide a consistent and generalized view (in other words, there will always
> be grey areas, considerations and edge cases outside the system)--which I
> don't see as a problem, as I'm not really interested in finding the One True
> Theory.
> //p
> http://www.interdisciplina.org/00.0
>
> On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 4:06 PM, Adern X <the.apx at libero.it> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:16:29 -0500, a Bad Day on the Midway, David Powers
>> <cyborgk at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > The theoretical language I am developing should apply to both Bach and
>> > Xanakis.
>> >
>> > Bach's musical technique tends to result in overall static textures
>> > that are stable within a given period of time. His small pieces tend
>> > to live within one single textural domain. In my own terminology, Bach
>> > works with single "plateaus" in short pieces, and sequences of
>> > plateaus in larger pieces. The Goldberg Variations would consist of 31
>> > distinct plateaus, for instance.
>> >
>> > Xenakis' statistical methods, on the other hand, give rise to both
>> > static plateaus, and transitions between plateaus.
>>
>> Seems interesting, have you done a pdf or something else where you
>> explain in detail your method?
>> I'm not completely convinced that your plateau concept can descrive
>> both Xenakis and Bach but perhaps i have a wrong understanding of
>> "plateau".
>>
>> Hi,
>> A.X
>> --
>>  (     mailto: adern at libero.it                     http://www.xevor.net
>>  ))
>> |""|-. http://www.myspace.com/adernx
>> |__|-' "Boredom is the mother of creativity" (Ron Arad)
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