Alex;
Yes! And if a musical genre all sounds the same, it's probably
> because you don't know it well enough to be able to identify the
> points of variation.
>
>
Indeed. I do remember what Bach's fugues sounded like to me the first time
that I heard them!
However, there are still some odd things going on. With regard to intonation
techno is one of the most diverse styles in existence. Thanks to technology
it's range from staccato to legato playing is enormous, to take just one
example. From a musicology perspective it's quite amazing that we would
consider it a coherent "genre" at all. I do suspect that many of the people
who claim "techno is all the same' simply don't know that many techno
records. Curiously it's still bon-ton to claim this, which I suspect is more
of a cultural phenomenon than anything else.
That said; if the claim is that "experimental electronic music" does tend to
gravitate to certain sounds and structures I would have to agree. Today it
is harder to come up with truly original sounds than it is to get access to
a tool that could create any sound we'd like.
Most, likely all, of us use instruments that could make any sound or audio
structure and I don't think any of us have yet created a completely new form
of music. I don't think that could be blamed on the Toplap scene, I think
it's simply a result of how human creativity works. To put it bluntly; what
percentage of this list wasn't in the age when musical taste develops during
the rise of house-music?
> That too is a good question. How much music moves people to kiss one's
> > neighbour? In my own experience, BTW, whenever I saw people that were
> moved
> > to kiss their neighbour at concerts techno was involved so we might be
> right
> > on course there.
>
> Fantastic point! I think I will reuse this point many times in the
> future.
There will likely be points made against this related to the usage of drugs.
We may, however, wonder whether it isn't quite interesting in and of itself
that techno apparently creates a social context in which people somehow feel
free to use drugs. Most people, most of the time, would probably not feel
safe enough around strangers to take drugs. The subjective sense of
community at house parties is widely documented and really quite
interesting.
I would theorise that the psychological effect of a pounding beat might work
on a different level of the nervous system than the enjoyment of a well
played fugue, but I don't think that that somehow makes the experienced
emotions less valuable.
Livecoding, with it's focus on structure, plays a interesting role here.
Apparently there is a discomfort in the people who made the comments you
forwarded with the link between these different kinds of enjoyment. I think
it is generally considered lofty to make the transition from physical
enjoyment to formalised writing (let's say in a love-poem) but when we go
from our little intellectual games to techno (which I would argue has a
strong physical component) people get uncomfortable.
Only yesterday I was in a seminar where "all that dance
> stuff" was disparaged as "manufactured in the studio". Such a tired
> argument. You dance to music in a club, then go home to your bedroom
> studio to write more music inspired by that, all part of one activity,
> and yes kissing is often worked in to the process.
>
> It's not so clear to me what would be bad about music being made in a
studio, if that's what people want to do. Oddly, when dance-music is made
live on stage, in my experience, people don't tend to dance and instead
stand relatively still listening. Material that was previously recorded does
tend to lead to people dancing. We could theorise that this might have to do
with the additional care that studio recordings can get, but I find that
people still stand still more when a artist merely pretends to play live and
instead is presenting pre-made pieces. Of course these are generalisations
and many exceptions exist.
It's odd how this type of labelling carries such strong connotations. When
it was said that "dance stuff is all manufactured in the studio" that is
somehow a critique yet when somebody would note that "guitarists hold
strings down and strum them" he would likely get some strange looks for
pointing out the blatantly obvious.
>
>
> There is aggression in programming culture I think, perhaps set during
> the first 20 years of heavy military investment. I'm not saying you
> code aggressively but the way programming is taught and the way
> programmers behave to one another is affected I think.
Maybe I have just been fortunate, but I experience the programmers that I
know as very friendly and indeed generous. I'm typing this on a OS that
consists entirely of the work of programmers sharing their work for the
benefit of all, all languages that I know of have a mailinglist that
consists entirely of people helping each other other out. It's almost
hippy-like.
I would sooner want to investigate the bothersome signs of depression
amongst designers of DAW's and plugins than look for syntactical aggression
caused by military funding in the early days of computing.
Kas.
Received on Thu Nov 26 2009 - 16:07:22 GMT